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Home-made Hop Yeast

A yeast mixture made from hops, potatoes, flour, sugar, and yeast, thickened with cornmeal.

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 ↓

Home-made Hop Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

  1. Tie the hops in a cloth and place in a kettle with 1 quart of water and 3 peeled potatoes.

  2. Boil until the potatoes are done.

  3. Remove the hops.

Make the yeast mixture

  1. Mash the potatoes.

  2. Stir in 1 quart of sifted flour and ½ cup of sugar.

  3. Add the soaked prepared yeast when the mixture is cool enough.

  4. Set aside to rise.

  5. Thicken with cornmeal.

Dry and shape

  1. Dry in the wind or shade.

  2. Cut into thin cakes or leave in lumps.

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. 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
Gives the yeast its bitter, aromatic flavour and helps preserve the mixture.
Potatoes
Provide starch and moisture that feed the yeast and give the dough body.
Sifted flour
Forms the bulk of the mixture and gives structure once thickened and dried.
Sugar
Provides food for the yeast, helping it become active and rise.
Prepared yeast
Causes the mixture to ferment and rise, leavening the dough.

The step that matters

Add the yeast when the mixture is cool enough. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to a hot mixture can stop it from fermenting. Letting the mixture cool first keeps the yeast alive so it can raise the dough.

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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