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Hop Yeast

A yeast starter made with hops, water, flour, potatoes, yeast, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 235 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Hop Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

  1. Boil the hops in 2 quarts of water until reduced to 3 pints.

  2. Strain the liquid and return it to the pot.

  3. Mix 1 cup of wheat flour with a little cold water until smooth, then thicken the liquid with this mixture.

  4. Boil for 3 to 4 minutes.

Add potatoes and yeast

  1. Mash and add 6 boiled and peeled potatoes to the mixture.

  2. Let it stand until lukewarm, then strain it again.

  3. Add 1 cup of good yeast and set it in a warm place.

  4. When frothy, add 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt.

Store

  1. Transfer to a jar, cover it, and store in a cool place.

  2. Scald the yeast jar thoroughly before adding fresh yeast.

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. Wheat + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Hops + wheattop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Hops
Provide bitterness and aroma that flavour the liquid and help preserve the starter.
Wheat flour
Thickens the hop liquid into a smooth base once cooked.
Potatoes
Add starch and body to the mixture, feeding the yeast.
Yeast
Ferments the mixture, producing froth and rising activity for leavening.

The step that matters

Let it stand until lukewarm before adding yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes in. Adding it too hot can stop fermentation and leave the starter inactive.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits about as well
  2. Lettucefits about as well
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, wheat, 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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