Why it works: Flour and gin work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Dry Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the hops
Tie a large handful of hops in a cloth and place in a crock or bright stew pan.
Pour one and one-half quarts boiling water over them and steep fifteen minutes.
Remove from fire, squeeze the water from the hops and lay them aside.
Make the starter
Put one quart flour, one tablespoonful of ginger, and three of sugar into the hot water, which should be hot enough to thoroughly scald the flour.
When cool, add a couple of cakes of good dry yeast.
Stir the mixture frequently. Every time it rises, stir it down again.
Let it stand overnight.
The next morning stir as before.
When it is all a light foam, stir thick with corn meal.
Dry the yeast
Make into cakes and dry in the shade.
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. See the original page.
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 + gintop 29% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
-
Flour + hopstop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10 recipes
Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
-
Gin + hopstop 56% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together0 recipes
Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Hops
- Flavors the liquid with bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the yeast mixture.
- Flour
- Thickens the mixture and gives the yeast a starch base to feed on.
- Yeast (in the method)
- Ferments the mixture, producing gas that makes it rise and foam.
- Sugar (in the method)
- Provides food for the yeast, speeding fermentation.
- Corn meal (in the method)
- Stiffens the mixture so it can be shaped into cakes for drying.
The step that matters
Scalding the flour in the hot water. The water must be hot enough to thoroughly scald the flour. Scalding gelatinizes the starch so it can be fermented and the mixture sets properly, while water that is too cool leaves the flour raw and the yeast less 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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