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Dry Stock Yeast

A yeast starter made by steeping hops in boiling water, mixing with flours and malt, then fermenting with sugar and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 933 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Dry Stock Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

  1. Pour 7 quarts of boiling water over 2 ounces of sweet fresh hops.

  2. Let it stand until the hops settle, then add 1 quart of water.

Make the paste and starter

  1. Mix enough of this liquid with 18 ounces of bread flour, ¼ pound of corn meal, ¼ pound of rice flour, and 2 ounces of crushed malt to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add the remaining liquid and set aside to cool.

  3. Once cooled, add 3-4 handfuls of white sugar and 1 ounce of compressed yeast or 1 pint of fresh fermented yeast.

  4. Set aside undisturbed for at least 20 hours.

  5. Strain and mix with sufficient flour to form a stiff sponge.

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. Corn + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Bread + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread flour
Forms the paste and the stiff sponge, providing the structure that holds the starter together.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the mixture, producing gas that leavens the dough.
White sugar
Provides food for the yeast, fueling fermentation and gas production.
Sweet fresh hops
Adds aroma and bitterness, and helps preserve the liquid.

The step that matters

Set aside undisturbed for at least 20 hours. The yeast needs uninterrupted time to ferment the sugars. Jostling or cooling too early can stall fermentation, leaving the sponge flat and underdeveloped.

“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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