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Hop Yeast

A yeast starter made by boiling hops in water, mixing with mashed potatoes and flour, then fermenting with baker's yeast.

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

Hop Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hop water

  1. Place the hops in a bag and add to 2 quarts of water; ensure the bag stays submerged while boiling.

Make the starter

  1. Peel and pare the potatoes, then boil them until done.

  2. Once the potatoes are cooked, mash them finely.

  3. In a yeast dish, add a little flour.

  4. Pour the boiling hop-water over the flour.

  5. When the mixture cools, add a little hop yeast and keep warm until it rises.

  6. Once risen, store in a jug and cork tightly.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + sugartop 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. Potato + hopstop 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
Provide the bitter, aromatic flavour and help preserve the starter.
Potatoes
Supply starch that feeds the yeast and gives the starter body.
Baker's yeast
Ferments the sugars so the starter rises and becomes leavening.
Sugar
Provides food for the yeast, driving fermentation and rising.

The step that matters

Keep the bag submerged while boiling the hops. Hops only release their bitter and aromatic compounds when fully in hot liquid; floating hops extract unevenly and can scorch.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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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