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Best Hop Yeast

A yeast mixture made from potatoes, hops, water, flour, molasses, brown sugar, coarse sea salt, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Best Hop Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the potatoes and hops in 2 quarts of water.

  2. Mash the potatoes and add flour, molasses, brown sugar, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Scald the mixture with the remaining 2 quarts of water.

Ferment

  1. When cool, add the yeast and leave it in a warm place for 24 hours, stirring often.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a jug.

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. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch that body and fermentable material for the yeast to work on.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the mixture, producing carbon dioxide that makes it lively and leavens it.
Brown sugar
Supplies sugar as readily available food for the yeast, driving fermentation and adding sweetness.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the liquid against spoilage.

The step that matters

Add the yeast only when the mixture is cool. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to the scalded mixture before it has cooled can stop fermentation before it starts. Cooling first keeps the yeast alive to work during the warm rest.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, flour, molasses, sugar. 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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