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Hop Yeast

A yeast starter made with hops, salt, sugar, potatoes, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and coffee work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 167 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Hop Yeast

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Put hops and salt into a bowl.

  2. Pour boiling water over the hops and salt.

  3. Peel the potatoes.

  4. Grate the potatoes.

  5. Strain the liquid over the grated potatoes.

Make the mixture

  1. Add sugar.

  2. Heat on the stove for a few minutes to thicken.

  3. Stir in the yeast and cover.

  4. Place in a warm area to rise.

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 + coffeetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + potatotop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Hops + coffeetop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1 recipe

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Supply starch that thickens the mixture and gives the batter body and food for the yeast.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, so fermentation produces gas and a sweeter flavour.
Yeast
Ferments the starches and sugars, producing gas that makes the mixture rise.
Hops
Adds bitter, aromatic flavour to the liquid.

The step that matters

Stir in the yeast. Yeast is a living organism that can be killed by heat. Stirring it in while the mixture is still very hot can stop it working, so the rise may fail. Let the mixture cool enough before adding the yeast.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, hops, coffee. 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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