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To Make Yeast

A homemade yeast starter made by boiling flour, sugar, malt, and water, then fermenting with seltzer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

To Make Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liquid

  1. Boil flour, brown sugar, and bruised malt in water for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture into a container.

  3. Cool the liquid to 80°F (27°C).

  4. Add the seltzer water.

Ferment and separate

  1. Allow the mixture to ferment until bubbling stops.

  2. Once fermentation ceases, pour off the clear liquid, leaving the yeast at the bottom.

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. Sugar + malttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Flour + malttop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fine flour
Supplies starch that heat and malt enzymes break down into sugars the yeast can ferment.
Brown sugar
Provides readily fermentable sugar that feeds the yeast and adds flavour.
Bruised malt
Contributes enzymes and sugars that help convert starch into fermentable sugar.

The step that matters

Cool the liquid to 80°F before adding the seltzer water. Yeast is sensitive to heat. Liquid that is too hot can kill or stress the yeast cells, stopping fermentation, while a cooler liquid keeps them active and able to produce bubbles and alcohol.

“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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