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Yahoo Yeast

A yeast starter made from molasses, hops, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,429 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Yahoo Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix 1 ½ tablespoons of molasses with ½ cup of warm water.

  2. Stir in enough flour to create a thin batter and set it in a warm place until it bubbles and ferments.

Make the hop liquid

  1. In a clean porcelain kettle, boil 1 cup of hops in 2 quarts of boiling water for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the hops into a clean dish.

Thicken and combine

  1. Stir in 1 pint of flour and 1 tablespoon of salt until free of lumps.

  2. Return to heat, stirring constantly until it thickens and boils.

  3. If too thick, add boiling water until it reaches the consistency of good starch.

  4. Pour back into the bowl, cover, and let cool to milk-warm.

  5. Stir in the fermented batter and keep warm until it rises and is light.

Store

  1. Transfer to a jug, cork it, and store in a cool place for use.

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. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + hopstop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. Molasses + hopstop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

New orleans molasses
Feeds the yeast, giving it sugar to ferment into gas and flavour.
Flour
Provides starch that thickens the liquid and gives the starter body.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the starter against spoilage.
Fermented batter
Supplies the live yeast that makes the starter rise and become light.

The step that matters

Thickening the flour mixture. Stirring constantly prevents flour from scorching on the bottom and forming lumps. Adding flour to hot liquid must be whisked smoothly so the starch gelatinises evenly into a uniform, pourable consistency.

“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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