Skip to main content
Baking

Hop Yeast

A homemade yeast made by boiling hops and potatoes with sugar, salt and ginger, then adding yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and ginger work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 992 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hop Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hop liquid

  1. Boil the potatoes in 1 pint of water until soft.

  2. Steep the hops in the remaining ½ pint of water for 20 minutes in a granite or porcelain-lined saucepan.

  3. Mash the boiled potatoes in the water they were cooked in.

  4. Strain the hop water into the potato water.

Make the yeast

  1. Add the salt, sugar, and ginger. Mix well.

  2. When cool, add the dissolved yeast cake or liquid yeast.

  3. Cover the bowl and let it stand in a warm place until foamy.

  4. Skim and stir several times.

Store

  1. Transfer the yeast to glass jars or a stone jug, sealing securely.

  2. Store in a cool place and shake well before using.

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 + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together992 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Hops + gingertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Starch that thickens the liquid and feeds the yeast as it ferments.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the liquid.
Yeast cake or yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing carbon dioxide that makes the mixture foamy and lively.
Sugar
Food for the yeast, driving fermentation and producing carbon dioxide.

The step that matters

When cool, add the dissolved yeast cake or liquid yeast.. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the liquid must be cool enough before it is added. Warm liquid that is too hot can stop fermentation before it starts.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, ginger, 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

Delicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipesCitron CakeCitron Cake68 recipesScotch CakeScotch Cake63 recipes