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Drink

Hop Yeast

A fermented beverage made from hops, water, flour, yeast, and mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and potato 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 tea

  1. Boil hops in water until strength is extracted.

Thicken the mixture

  1. Rub flour smooth with cold water, strain the tea, and mix it in.

  2. Cook slowly like mush for 5 to 10 minutes.

Cool, ferment and rise

  1. Let it cool, then add yeast and mashed potatoes.

  2. Put the mixture in a stone jug or bottles 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. Flour + potatotop 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

Hops
Extract bitterness and aroma that give the beer its characteristic flavour.
Flour
Starch thickens the liquid into a mush and gives it body.
Yeast
Ferments sugars into gas, making the mixture rise and turn lively.
Potatoes
Mashed potatoes add starch and body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Let it cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is a living organism that hot liquid can kill. Letting the mixture cool first keeps the yeast active so it can ferment and make the mixture rise.

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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