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Drink

Yeast

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and ginger work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 992 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potato base

  1. Wet 4 tablespoons of flour to a smooth paste.

  2. Boil 4 small potatoes or 3 large ones, mash fine, and mix with the flour paste.

  3. Pour on the potato water until the mixture reaches the right consistency.

Add yeast and store

  1. When nearly cool, add the yeast and salt.

  2. For a different method, add 1 cup grated raw potato, ½ cup coarse sea salt, and ½ cup sugar to 1 quart boiling water, stirring well.

  3. When nearly cold, add 1 cup of good yeast.

  4. In about 12 hours, it should be light; store in a jug or bottle and cork tightly.

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 + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together992 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Hops + gingertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and body that the yeast ferments into a light, lively drink.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing carbonation and the lightness the brew is judged by.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, supplying the fermentable sugar that drives the fermentation.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the potato mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast when nearly cool. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to a mixture that is still hot can stop fermentation before it starts. Waiting until the liquid is nearly cool lets the yeast survive and work.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

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