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Hop Yeast

A yeast starter made with hops, potatoes, water, 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 ↓

Hop Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Tie the hops in a cloth.

  2. Peel the potatoes and place them in a kettle with the water.

Make the starter

  1. Sift flour and wet it with cold water to make a paste.

  2. When the potatoes are done, pour the boiling water into the flour while stirring continuously.

  3. Mash the potatoes and add them to the mixture.

  4. Once cool, add the yeast and set it in a warm place to rise.

  5. When very light, strain through a wire sieve and transfer to a jug, then cork tightly.

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).

  2. Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. 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
Adds bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the starter.
Potatoes
Provide starch and moisture that feed the yeast and give the starter body.
Flour
Forms the paste that thickens the mixture and supplies starch for the yeast to work on.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the mixture, producing gas that makes it rise and light.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast after the mixture has cooled. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to a hot mixture can stop fermentation. Letting it cool first keeps the yeast alive so it can rise the starter.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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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