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Yeast with a Ferment

A method for producing yeast by fermenting a wheat flour gruel with sugar and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Yeast with a Ferment

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gruel

  1. Mix 2 quarts of water with enough wheat flour to achieve a thick gruel consistency.

  2. Boil the mixture gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Allow it to cool almost completely, then stir in ½ cup of sugar and 4 tablespoons of good yeast.

Ferment and store

  1. Transfer the mixture to a large jug or earthen vessel with a narrow top.

  2. Place the vessel in a warm spot to allow fermentation.

  3. After fermentation, pour off and discard the thin liquor that rises to the top.

  4. Store the remaining yeast in a cool place in a bottle or jug, tied over.

  5. Use the same quantity of this yeast as you would common yeast for baking or brewing.

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. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Wheat + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,071 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat flour
Forms the thick gruel that feeds the yeast culture.
Sugar
Provides food for the yeast, driving fermentation.
Good yeast
Starter culture that begins the fermentation.

The step that matters

Cooling before adding the yeast. If the gruel is still hot when the yeast goes in, the heat can kill the live yeast cells, so the fermentation will fail. Let it cool almost completely first.

“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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