Name: To Make Good Yeast
Ingredients: as many hops as you can hold in your hands (twice); 3 pints cold water; flour (enough to make a stiff batter); 1 cup old yeast; 1 teaspoon saleratus; 1 pound flour; ¼ pound brown sugar; a little salt; 2 gallons water

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 ↓

To Make Good Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

Boil hops in 3 pints of cold water for 20 minutes.
Strain the water into an earthen or stone jar.
While the water is hot, stir in enough flour to make a stiff batter.

Start the yeast

Let it cool until milk-warm.
Add 1 cup of old yeast and 1 teaspoon of dissolved saleratus; stir well.
Place the jar in a warm area to rise.

Make cakes and another yeast

For cakes, add enough Indian meal after it has risen well and dry on a board in the sun.
To use, soak a small cake in warm water to make a large pan of dough rise.
For another yeast, boil 1 pound of flour, ¼ pound of brown sugar, and a little salt in 2 gallons of water for 1 hour.
When milk-warm, bottle and cork it tightly; it will be ready in 24 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.

Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10 recipes

Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6 recipes

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

Old yeast: Provides the live culture that starts fermentation and makes the dough rise.
Flour: Forms the stiff batter that feeds the culture and gives the starter body.
Hops: Adds bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the liquid.
Saleratus: Releases gas when dissolved, adding lift to the rising mixture.
Brown sugar: Feeds the yeast with sugar for fermentation and adds sweetness and flavor.

The step that matters

Let it cool until milk-warm before adding the yeast. Yeast cells are killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must be cooled to about body-warm before the old yeast goes in. Too hot and the culture will not grow, so the batch will fail to rise.

“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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To Make Good Yeast