Name: Yeast Without Seed Yeast to Start It
Ingredients: 4 lbs malt; ½ lb hops; 4 gallons boiling water; 8 lbs flour; 2 quarts old barm or 1 quart malt-and-hops yeast; 2 oz hops

Why it works: Malt and flour work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Yeast Without Seed Yeast to Start It

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 150°F (65°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mash

Mash the malt in a large tub with 1 gallon of water at 150°F (65°C).
Pour 2 quarts of boiling water over the hops and let them mash for about an hour.

Make the scald

Strain the hops, then stir in 8 lbs of flour while pouring in 10 to 12 quarts of boiling water to make a scald.
Stir for a few minutes until cooled to 76°F (24°C).
Add 2 quarts of old barm or 1 quart of malt-and-hops yeast and stir well.
Let it ferment for 20 to 40 hours.

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.

Malt + flourtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together260 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10 recipes

Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
Malt + hopstop 49% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1 recipe

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

Malt: Provides fermentable sugars that feed the yeast during fermentation.
Flour: Supplies starch and body that thickens the scald and gives the yeast material to work on.
Old barm or malt-and-hops yeast: Supplies the live yeast culture that drives fermentation and leavening.

The step that matters

Cool the scald to 76°F (24°C) before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed or weakened by very hot liquid, so the scald must cool to a moderate temperature before the barm or yeast is stirred in. Stirring until it reaches the stated temperature protects the culture and lets fermentation start reliably.

“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.