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Patent Yeast

Yeast cakes made from hops, flour, cornmeal, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Mary Randolph (1762–1828) · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Hops and flour work together. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10 recipes. Both carry eugenol, which smells clove, spicy. The science ↓

Patent Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

  1. Put half a pound of fresh hops into a gallon of water and boil it until it reduces to two quarts.

  2. Strain the liquid.

Make and shape the dough

  1. Make a thin batter by adding flour to the strained liquid.

  2. Add half a pint of good yeast and allow it to ferment well.

  3. Pour the fermented mixture into a bowl and incorporate enough cornmeal to give it the consistency of biscuit dough.

  4. Set the dough to rise until it becomes quite light.

  5. Shape the risen dough into little cakes.

Dry and store

  1. Dry the cakes in the shade, turning them frequently.

  2. Keep the cakes away from damp and dust.

  3. If brewer's yeast is available, take one quart of it, add a quart of water, and proceed as before.

  4. To prepare the cakes, take one or more cakes according to the flour you are to make; pour a little warm water over them; when the water dissolves, stir well, thicken with a little flour, and set near the fire to rise before use.

  5. Store yeast in a small mug or pitcher with a close stopper, covered with a double fold of linen, for better preservation.

By Mary Randolph (1762–1828). 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. 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.

  1. Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh hops
Boiled into the liquid to give bitterness and aroma that flavour the cakes.
Yeast
Ferments the batter so it becomes light and airy as it rises.
Cornmeal (in the method)
Stiffens the fermented batter into a dough that holds its shape as cakes.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the liquid into a batter and later gives body to the dough.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until quite light. Yeast gas must be trapped and build up in the dough for the cakes to rise; under-proofed dough stays dense, while over-proofing lets the structure collapse.

“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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