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Hop Yeast

A yeast mixture made with hops, potatoes, salt, flour, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hop Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

  1. Boil the dry hops in 2 quarts of boiling water.

  2. Boil the potatoes until done.

  3. Mash the potatoes finely.

  4. Add 2 tablespoons of coarse sea salt to the mashed potatoes.

  5. Strain the hop water into the mashed potatoes.

Make the batter

  1. Stir in enough flour to make a thin batter.

  2. Let the batter cool.

  3. Stir in 1 pint of good yeast.

Rise and store

  1. Let the mixture rise for 5 to 6 hours until frothy.

  2. Strain the mixture through a colander into a stone jar.

  3. Seal the jar tightly.

  4. Store the jar in a cool place; it will keep for a week.

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. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. 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

Dry hops
Provide bitterness and aroma, and their liquor flavours the batter.
Potatoes
Supply starch and body, giving the batter thickness and food for the yeast.
Flour
Adds starch and bulk so the batter holds together as a thin batter.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the batter, producing gas that makes it rise and froth.

The step that matters

Let the batter cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed or slowed by high heat, so adding it to hot batter can stop fermentation before the mixture rises and froths.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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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