Name: Hop Yeast
Ingredients: ½ tablespoon pressed hops or a heaping handful of unpressed hops; 3 quarts water; ½ pint brown sugar; 2 tablespoons salt; 1 pound flour; 3 pounds good mealy potatoes

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 ↓

Hop Yeast

Ingredients

½ tablespoon pressed hops or a heaping handful of unpressed hops
3 quarts water
½ pint brown sugar
2 tablespoons salt
1 pound flour
3 pounds good mealy potatoes

Directions

Make the hop water

Boil the hops in 3 quarts of water gently for 30 minutes.
Strain the liquid.
Let the liquid cool to milk-warm.

Make the starter

Add 1 cup of brown sugar to the hop water. Add 2 tablespoons of salt to the hop water.
Wet 1 pound of flour with a little of the hop water. Gradually stir in the remaining hop water.
Let the mixture stand in a warm place for 4 days, stirring frequently.
On the third day, boil the potatoes. Mash the boiled potatoes and stir them into the yeast mixture.
Let the mixture stand for one more day.

Strain and bottle

Strain the mixture.
Bottle the strained liquid.

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.

Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,355 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + potatotop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10 recipes

Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
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: Add bitterness and aroma, and help the liquid keep and ferment well.
Flour: Provides starch that feeds the yeast and thickens the starter.
Potatoes: Supply starch and moisture that feed the fermentation.
Brown sugar: Feeds the yeast, driving fermentation and adding sweetness and flavor.