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Hop Yeast

A yeast made by boiling hops in water and mixing with mashed potatoes, sugar, salt, flour, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Hop Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes and hops

  1. Pare and boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. In another kettle, boil the hops in cold water.

  3. Drain and mash the boiled potatoes finely.

  4. Strain the boiling hops over the mashed potatoes and stir well.

Make the yeast

  1. Add sugar, salt, and flour; mix thoroughly and strain through a colander.

  2. Let the mixture cool until milk-warm, then stir in the yeast.

  3. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise for about five hours.

  4. Once risen, pour into a stone jug, cork 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + sugartop 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. Potato + hopstop 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

Mealy potatoes
Their starch breaks down and thickens the mixture, giving the yeast a body to feed on.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and their natural preservative qualities help the liquid keep.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, providing the fuel that drives fermentation and rising.
Flour
Supplies additional starch that the yeast can ferment, adding body to the mixture.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, producing carbon dioxide that makes the mixture rise and turn active.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool until milk-warm before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must be cooled to a gentle warmth before it is added. Too hot and the yeast will not activate; the rise will fail.

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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