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Dessert

Dry Yeast

A yeast cake made with hops, ginger, sugar, flour, dry yeast, and cornmeal, then dried in the shade.

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 starter

  1. Tie hops in a cloth and place in a crock or bright stew pan.

  2. Pour boiling water over hops and steep for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and squeeze water from hops and set aside.

  4. Add flour, ginger, and sugar to the hot water.

  5. Ensure the mixture is hot enough to scald the flour.

  6. When cool, add dry yeast.

  7. Stir frequently.

Rise and thicken

  1. Each time it rises, stir it down again.

  2. Let it stand overnight.

  3. The next morning, stir as before until it forms a light foam.

  4. Thicken with cornmeal.

Shape and dry

  1. Shape into cakes.

  2. Dry 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

Hops
Provide bitterness and aroma that flavour the liquid before the yeast is added.
Flour
Supplies starch and body, thickening the mixture and giving the yeast food to work on.
Dry yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing gas that makes the mixture rise and foam.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness, speeding fermentation.
Cornmeal
Thickens the mixture so it can be shaped into cakes.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast when cool. Yeast cells are killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must cool enough before the yeast goes in, though it must still be hot enough to scald the flour.

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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