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Another Way to Make Yeast

A method for preparing a yeast starter using hops, water, salt, molasses, flour, cold water, and old yeast.

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 ↓

Another Way to Make Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

  1. Tie the hops in a thin bag and boil them in water.

  2. Add salt and molasses to the hop water.

Thicken and cool

  1. Make a thin paste with flour and cold water.

  2. Remove the hops and gradually pour the paste into the hop water.

  3. Boil the mixture for a few minutes.

  4. Let it cool until lukewarm, then add some old yeast.

Store

  1. Once it is light, store it in a cool place.

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. Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. Hops + molassestop 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

Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the starter.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a light paste that gives the starter body.
Old yeast
Provides live yeast cells that ferment the liquid and make it rise.
Molasses
Supplies sugar that feeds the yeast during fermentation.

The step that matters

Let it cool until lukewarm before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the liquid must be cooled to lukewarm before the yeast goes in to stay alive and active.

“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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