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Dessert

Patent Yeast

A biscuit dough made with hops, yeast, flour, and cornmeal, then dried into small cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,165 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Patent Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquor

  1. Boil ½ pound of fresh hops in 1 gallon of water until reduced to 2 quarts.

  2. Strain the mixture and make a thin batter with flour.

  3. Add ½ pint of good yeast and let it ferment well.

Shape and dry

  1. Pour the mixture into a bowl and work in enough cornmeal to achieve biscuit dough consistency.

  2. Set the dough to rise until light.

  3. Form the dough into small cakes and dry them in the shade, turning frequently.

  4. Keep the cakes secure from dampness and dust.

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 + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. Hops + corntop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4 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

Fresh hops
Provide bitterness and aroma, and their boiled extract flavours the dough.
Yeast
Ferments the batter so the dough rises and becomes light.
Flour
Forms the thin batter that the yeast ferments.
Corn meal
Stiffens the fermented batter into a workable biscuit dough.

The step that matters

Let the batter ferment well before shaping. Yeast needs time to ferment the batter; if it is rushed, the dough will not rise until light and the biscuits will be dense.

“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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