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Drink

Potato Yeast

A fermented beverage made from boiled hops, grated potatoes, sugar, salt, ginger, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Potato Yeast

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 ↓

Potato Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop infusion

  1. Boil the hops in a sack in 2 quarts of water for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the sack with hops.

Make the mash

  1. Add the grated potatoes, sugar, salt, and ginger immediately.

  2. Stir occasionally.

  3. Cook for 5 to 10 minutes until thick like starch.

  4. Turn the mixture into a jar.

  5. Let it cool to tepid in summer or warm in winter.

Ferment and store

  1. Add the yeast.

  2. Stir down as it rises until fermentation ceases.

  3. Cover the jar closely.

  4. Store in a cool place for up to 2 weeks.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + gingertop 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. Hops + potatotop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Sugar and ginger 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
Provide starch that cooks into a thick mash and feeds the fermentation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing carbon dioxide that makes the mixture rise and bubble.
White sugar
Provides the sugar that the yeast converts during fermentation.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma to the liquid.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool to tepid before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed or slowed by very hot liquid, so adding it too early can stop fermentation. Cooling to tepid, as the record directs, keeps the yeast active.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, sugar, ginger. 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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