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 ↓
To Make Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
Make the starter
Boil the fine flour, brown sugar, and bruised malt in ½ gallon of water for 15 minutes.
Strain the mixture through a sieve into a jug and let it cool to 80°F (27°C).
Add 1 pint of artificial seltzer water and set it before the fire to ferment.
Once fermentation stops, pour off the clear liquid for use.
Make the dough
Boil the hops in 2 gallons of water for 1 hour.
Scald 10 pounds of flour with the hot hop water and stir into a paste.
Let it stand until evening, then add 1 quart of yeast and mix well.
The next morning, add more flour and enough water to form a dough.
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.
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Sugar + malttop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together325 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Flour + malttop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together260 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + hopstop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10 recipes
Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
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Sugar + hopstop 43% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6 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
- Brown sugar
- Provides sugar that the yeast ferments, producing gas and flavor.
- Malt
- Supplies sugars and enzymes that feed fermentation and add depth of flavor.
- Hops
- Adds bitterness and aroma and helps balance the sweetness of the mash.
- Flour
- Scalding gelatinizes the starch, thickening the paste so it can bind into a dough.
The step that matters
Cool the liquid to 80°F before adding the seltzer water. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so cooling the mixture first lets the yeast survive and start fermenting.
“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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