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Hop Yeast

A yeast starter made from boiled hops, potatoes, flour, sugar, salt, ginger, and brewer's yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Hop Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hops and potatoes

  1. Boil the hops and sliced potatoes together.

  2. Remove the hops and squeeze out all the water.

  3. Mash the potatoes with the reserved water.

Make the starter

  1. Pour 3 quarts of boiling water over the flour to make a starch.

  2. Add sugar, salt, and ground ginger to the flour mixture and stir well.

  3. Combine this mixture with the potato mash.

  4. When the mixture is lukewarm, add the brewer's yeast.

  5. Keep the mixture warm until it rises, then transfer to a stone jar.

  6. Cover the jar and store it in a cool place in summer and a warm place in winter.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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
Break down into a mash that thickens the starter and supplies starch for the yeast to feed on.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the starter against spoilage organisms.
Flour
Forms a starch base that the yeast ferments, giving the starter body.
Sugar
Provides quick-fermenting sugars that feed the yeast and drive rising.
Brewer's yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, producing gas that makes the mixture rise.

The step that matters

When the mixture is lukewarm, add the brewer's yeast.. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so adding it too early can stop fermentation. Lukewarm liquid is warm enough for the yeast to activate without harming it.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, flour, 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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