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 ↓
Home-made Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
Make the hop water
Boil the hops in 2 quarts of water for 30 minutes.
Make the mash
Peel, boil, and mash the potatoes until very fine.
Strain the hop-water through a fine strainer and mix it with the mashed potatoes, sugar, ginger, and salt.
When the mixture is blood-warm, stir in the yeast.
Rise and store
Cover and let it sit in a warm room for 5 to 6 hours, beating it several times while it rises.
Once it is sufficiently light, pour it into clean glass jars, cork tightly, and store in a cool place.
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.
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Potato + gingertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together992 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together14,054 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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Hops + gingertop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Hops + potatotop 39% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 feeds the yeast and gives the mixture body.
- Sugar
- Gives the yeast a quick food source, driving fermentation and rising.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars and produces gas that leavens the mixture.
- Hops
- Add bitterness and aroma and help preserve the liquid.
The step that matters
Cooling to blood-warm before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must be only lukewarm when the yeast goes in. Too hot and the yeast dies; too cool and fermentation is slow.
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hops, sugar, ginger):
- Mustardfits better
- Capsicumfits better
- Sweet potatofits better
- 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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