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Maiden Yeast

A simple yeast starter made by boiling hops, water, malt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Malt and sugar work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 325 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Maiden Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the hops in the water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain off the hops and pour the liquid into a strong bottle.

Ferment

  1. Add the malt and sugar to the bottle.

  2. Cork the bottle and secure it with wire.

  3. Let it stand in a warm place for 2 days and 2 nights.

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. Malt + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together325 recipes

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

  2. Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Hops + malttop 49% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1 recipe

    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

Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that flavour the liquid before fermentation.
Malt
Supplies sugars that yeast can ferment into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Sugar
Provides extra fermentable sugar to feed the yeast and drive fermentation.

The step that matters

Cork the bottle and secure it with wire. A strong, well-sealed closure is needed because fermentation produces carbon dioxide that builds pressure inside the bottle.

“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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