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Dry Yeast

A yeast cake made with hops, flour, ginger, sugar, and dry yeast, then dried.

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 ↓

Dry Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop infusion

  1. Tie the hops in a cloth.

  2. Place the tied hops in a crock or bright stew pan.

  3. Pour 1½ quarts of boiling water over the hops.

  4. Steep the hops for 15 minutes.

  5. Remove the hops from heat.

  6. Squeeze the water from the hops.

  7. Set the squeezed hops aside.

Make the yeast mixture

  1. Add 1 quart of flour to the hot water.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of ginger to the mixture.

  3. Add 3 tablespoons of sugar to the mixture.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

  5. Add 2 cakes of dry yeast to the cooled mixture.

  6. Stir the mixture frequently.

  7. Each time the mixture rises, stir it down.

  8. Let the mixture stand overnight.

  9. Stir the mixture until it forms a light foam.

Shape and dry

  1. Thicken the mixture with cornmeal.

  2. Shape the thickened mixture into cakes.

  3. Dry the cakes in the shade.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Ginger and sugar 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

Dry yeast
Ferments the sugars, making the mixture rise and foam so the cakes become light.
Flour
Provides starch and body that thickens the mixture and gives the cakes structure.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast so it ferments and produces gas for rising.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma and helps preserve the cakes.
Cornmeal
Thickens the mixture so it can be shaped into cakes.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must cool enough that the yeast stays alive and can ferment.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, flour, 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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