Skip to main content
Main

Home-made Hop Yeast

A yeast made by boiling hops and potatoes, then mixing with flour, sugar, and yeast, and drying into cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and sugar 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 ↓

Home-made Hop Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Boil and mash

  1. Tie a good pinch of hops in a cloth.

  2. Place the cloth in a kettle with 1 quart of water and the peeled potatoes.

  3. Boil until the potatoes are soft.

  4. Remove the hops.

  5. Mash the potatoes.

  6. Stir in 1 quart of sifted flour and ½ cup of sugar.

Rise and dry

  1. When the mixture cools, stir in the prepared yeast.

  2. Set aside to rise.

  3. Thicken with cornmeal.

  4. Dry the mixture in the wind or shade.

  5. Cut into thin cakes or leave in lumps.

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. Flour + sugartop 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).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Their starch thickens the mash and gives the mixture body and moisture.
Sifted flour
Adds starch and structure, giving the mixture body as it sets.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and provides food that the yeast consumes during rising.
Prepared yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing gas that makes the mixture rise.
Cornmeal
Thickens the mixture further so it can hold its shape when cut.

The step that matters

Stir in the yeast only after the mixture cools. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to a hot mash can stop fermentation and prevent the mixture from rising.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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.

More hop yeast recipes

Starter 9Bread 8 See all 46 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes