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Self-working Hop Yeast

A yeast made by boiling hops, fermenting with sugar and salt, and adding mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Self-working Hop Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hop liquid

  1. Boil hops in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquid and let it cool to lukewarm.

  3. Add brown sugar and salt to the liquid.

Make and ferment the yeast

  1. Use enough liquid to mix with flour until combined.

  2. Let the mixture ferment, stirring frequently, for up to a week in cold weather.

  3. Add mashed potatoes after fermentation.

  4. Strain and bottle the mixture after it ferments again.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + potatotop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Hops + potatotop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the liquid.
Brown sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness and colour.
Flour
Provides starch that the yeast works on, thickening the mixture into a starter.
Potatoes
Add starch and moisture that feed the fermentation and give body.

The step that matters

Let the hop liquid cool to lukewarm. Liquid that is still hot can kill yeast before it starts working. Cooling it to lukewarm keeps the yeast alive so it can ferment the sugars and starches in the mixture.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hops, sugar, flour):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, sugar, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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