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 yeast batter
Boil half a pound of fresh hops in four quarts of water until the liquid is reduced to two quarts.
Strain the liquid and mix in sufficient wheat flour to make a thin batter, adding half a pint of strong fresh yeast.
Allow the mixture to ferment until done.
Shape and dry the cakes
Pour the fermented mixture into a pan and stir in sufficient Indian meal to make a moderately stiff dough.
Cover the dough and set it in a warm place to rise.
When the dough has become very light, roll it out into a thick sheet and cut it into little cakes.
Spread the cakes on a dish and let them dry gradually in a cool place away from sun.
Turn the cakes five or six times a day while drying.
When the cakes are quite dry, put them into paper bags and keep them in a jar or box closely covered in a dry place.
Use the yeast
When you want to use the yeast, dissolve one or more cakes in a little warm water (in proportion to the quantity of bread you intend making).
When the mixture is quite dissolved, stir it hard, thicken it with a little flour, cover it, and place it near the fire to rise before use.
Mix the risen yeast with flour in the usual manner of preparing bread.
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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Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Adds bitterness and aroma and helps preserve the yeast starter.
- Strong fresh yeast
- Provides the microbes that ferment the batter and make it rise.
- Wheat flour (in the method)
- Forms the batter's starch structure that the fermenting yeast works through.
- Indian meal (in the method)
- Stiffens the fermented mixture into a dough that holds its shape when cut.
The step that matters
Drying the cakes gradually. If the cakes dry too fast or are left damp, they can mould or lose their yeast activity. Slow drying in a cool place, with regular turning, keeps them dry evenly and preserves the live yeast for later use.
“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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