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Drink

Yeast Without Yeast

A beverage made by boiling hops, mixing with salt, sugar, flour, and mashed potatoes, then fermenting and storing in stone jugs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

Yeast Without Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

  1. Boil the hops in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquid into a crock and let it cool to lukewarm.

  3. Add salt and brown sugar, then mix flour with some of the liquid until smooth.

  4. Stir the flour mixture into the crock and mix well.

Ferment

  1. On Wednesday, add the boiled and mashed potatoes and stir well.

  2. Let the mixture stand until Thursday, then strain it into stone jugs.

  3. Leave the corks loose for the first day or two and stir occasionally.

  4. Keep the jugs near a fire and store in a cool place.

Serve

  1. Shake the jug before pouring, covering the mouth with your hand to prevent yeast escape.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + potatotop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. 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 that give the beer its characteristic flavor.
Potatoes
Supply starch that feeds the fermentation and adds body to the brew.
Brown sugar
Provides sugar for the yeast to ferment, producing alcohol and carbonation.
Flour
Adds starch and body to the liquid, helping it thicken and feed the fermentation.

The step that matters

Leave the corks loose during the first day or two. Fermentation produces carbon dioxide, and sealed jugs can build pressure and burst. Loose corks let gas escape while the yeast is most active.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, sugar, 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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