Why it works: Flour and sugar 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 ↓
Home-made Hop Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
Make the starter
Tie a good pinch of hops in a cloth.
Place the cloth with hops in a kettle with 1 quart of water and 3 peeled potatoes.
Boil until the potatoes are soft.
Remove the hops from the kettle.
Mash the potatoes.
Stir in 1 quart of sifted flour and ½ cup of sugar.
Allow the mixture to cool.
Stir in the prepared yeast.
Set aside to rise.
Thicken and dry
Thicken with cornmeal.
Dry the mixture in the wind or shade.
Cut into thin cakes or leave in lumps.
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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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
-
Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,355 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Hops (in the method)
- Provides bitter and aromatic flavour that is carried into the liquid during boiling.
- Potatoes
- Break down when boiled and mashed, adding body and starch to the mixture.
- Sifted flour
- Adds starch and bulk, giving the mixture structure as it thickens.
- Sugar
- Provides sweetness and food for the yeast to act on.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars in the mixture, causing it to rise.
- Cornmeal
- Thickens the mixture further so it can be shaped and dried.
The step that matters
Stir in the prepared yeast. Yeast must be added only after the mixture has cooled. Heat kills yeast cells, so adding it to a hot mixture can stop fermentation and prevent the mixture from rising.
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar):
- Arrowrootfits better
- Beetrootfits better
- Sweet potatofits better
- Potatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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.
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