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Drink

Yeast

A fermented beverage made from boiled hops, potatoes, flour, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a saucepan, boil the dry hops in 2 quarts of boiling water.

  2. In another saucepan, boil the potatoes until done.

  3. Mash the potatoes finely and add 2 tablespoons of coarse sea salt.

  4. Strain the hop water over the mashed potatoes and stir in enough flour to make a thin batter.

Ferment

  1. Let the mixture cool until it is safe to touch, then stir in 1 pint of good yeast.

  2. Set the mixture aside to rise for 5-6 hours or until foamy.

  3. Strain the mixture through a colander into a stone jug, seal it tightly, and store in a cool place.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Mashed potatoes add starch and body, thickening the liquid into a batter.
Flour
Starch and proteins thicken the mixture into a thin batter that the yeast can work through.
Yeast
Yeast ferments the sugars, producing carbon dioxide that makes the mixture rise and foam.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding the yeast. Yeast cells are killed by high heat, so a mixture still hot when the yeast goes in will not foam or rise properly. Letting it cool until just safe to touch protects the yeast.

“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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