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 ↓
Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
Make the hop infusion
Steep hops in boiling water for 5 minutes.
Strain the infusion over flour mixed with a little cold water to form a smooth paste.
Cook and cool
Boil the mixture for 1 minute.
Add salt and sugar, then let it cool to lukewarm.
Ferment
Stir in the yeast and let it stand for 24 hours, stirring occasionally.
Cover closely and set in a cool place.
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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Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10 recipes
Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
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Hops + sugartop 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
- Flour
- Forms the paste that thickens the starter and gives the yeast food to work on.
- Sugar
- Provides food for the yeast, driving fermentation and gas production.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars and makes the starter bubble and rise.
- Hops
- Contributes bitterness and aroma and helps keep the starter stable.
The step that matters
Cooling to lukewarm before adding yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat. Adding it to a mixture that is still hot can destroy its activity, so the starter may fail to ferment. Cooling to lukewarm keeps the yeast alive and active.
“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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