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Drink

Hop Yeast

A fermented beverage made from hops, potatoes, salt, sugar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Hop Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hop water

  1. Boil a handful of hops in 1 quart of water for 20 minutes, then strain.

Make the mixture

  1. Pare and slice 6 large potatoes into the hop water.

  2. Add ½ cup of coarse sea salt and ½ cup of sugar, then boil until the potatoes are soft.

  3. Mash the mixture through a colander and let it cool.

Ferment and store

  1. When cool, add 2 yeast cakes soaked in water.

  2. Set in a warm place until well fermented, then bottle and store in the cellar.

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 + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

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

  2. Hops + potatotop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    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

Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that give the beer its characteristic flavor.
Potatoes
Supply starch and body that the yeast ferments into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Sugar
Provides fermentable sugar that feeds the yeast and drives fermentation.
Yeast cakes
Ferment the sugars and starches, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide for carbonation.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding yeast. Yeast is killed or weakened by hot liquid, so the mixture must be cool before the yeast cakes go in. Adding them too early can stop fermentation entirely.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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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