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Drink

Hop Yeast

A fermented beverage made from potatoes, hops, and 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

Make the hop liquor

  1. Boil the hops in 2 quarts of water until only 3 pints remain.

Make the potato mixture

  1. Pare and grate the potatoes.

  2. Mix the grated potatoes with flour, brown sugar, and salt.

  3. Remove the hops and pour the water onto the potato mixture, stirring constantly.

  4. Return the mixture to the pot and boil for a few minutes.

  5. Pour back into the pan and let cool until milk-warm.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add the yeast and let stand for 24 hours.

  2. Bottle and store in a cool place.

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. Flour + hopstop 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

Potatoes
Grated potato provides starch and body to the liquid as it is cooked.
Hops
Hops add bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the liquid.
Light brown sugar
Sugar feeds the yeast, supplying the fuel for fermentation.
Yeast
Yeast ferments the sugars, producing carbonation and the drink's leavening action.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool until milk-warm before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so adding it too soon can stop fermentation. Milk-warm is cool enough to keep the yeast alive while still encouraging it to work.

Swap the potato

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

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

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