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 Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
Make the starter
Thicken water with flour and boil for 30 minutes.
Stir in brown sugar and let cool until nearly cold.
Add fresh yeast, shake well, and let stand uncovered for 1 day to ferment.
Finish and keep
Pour off the thin liquid that rises on top and shake the remainder.
To remove bitterness, strain yeast through bran mixed with warm water.
Cork the yeast for future use.
To use, take 4 tablespoons of the old yeast to ferment the next batch.
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.
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fine flour
- Thickens the water into a base that the yeast can ferment.
- Brown sugar
- Provides food for the yeast, feeding fermentation and adding sweetness.
- Fresh yeast
- Starts the fermentation that makes the liquid rise and carry flavor.
The step that matters
Letting the mixture cool until nearly cold before adding yeast. Yeast is killed by excessive heat, so adding it to a hot mixture can stop fermentation before it begins.
“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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