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Dry Yeast

A yeast cake made by steeping hops, mixing with flour, ginger, sugar, and dry yeast, then shaping and drying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Dry Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop infusion

  1. Tie the hops in a cloth and place in a crock or bright stew pan.

  2. Pour 1½ quarts of boiling water over the hops and steep for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the hops from heat.

  4. Squeeze the water from the hops.

  5. Set the hops aside.

Ferment

  1. In the hot water, add 1 quart of flour, 1 tablespoon of ginger, and 3 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. When the mixture cools, add 2 cakes of dry yeast.

  3. Stir the mixture frequently.

  4. Each time the mixture rises, stir it down again.

  5. Let the mixture stand overnight.

  6. The next morning, stir the mixture until it forms a light foam.

Shape and dry

  1. Thicken the mixture with cornmeal.

  2. Shape the mixture into cakes.

  3. Dry the cakes in the shade.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Hops + gingertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments the mixture, producing gas that makes it rise and foam.
Flour
Provides starch and body that the yeast works through, giving the mixture structure.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, driving fermentation and adding sweetness.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the mixture.
Cornmeal
Thickens the mixture so it can be shaped into cakes.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed or weakened by very hot liquid, so the mixture must cool to a warm temperature before the yeast is added for fermentation to start reliably.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hops, flour, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, flour, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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