Why it works: Rye and barley share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 66 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓
Dry Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
Make the starter
Boil the grated hops and water together for 30 minutes.
Strain the mixture and add the rye meal or flour to the warm liquid.
When the temperature cools to room temperature, add the yeast.
The next day, when fermentation occurs, add the barley flour to form a dough.
Dry the dough
Cut the dough into thin disks and dry them quickly in the open air or sun.
Use
To use, break the disks into small pieces and soak them overnight in warm water.
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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Rye + barleytop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together66 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
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Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,320 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Barley + flourtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together582 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10 recipes
Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
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Hops + ryetop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4 recipes
Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Grated hops
- Adds bitter and aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid.
- Rye meal or flour
- Provides starch for the yeast to feed on and adds body to the mixture.
- Yeast
- Ferments sugars into gas and flavour, leavening the dough.
- Barley flour
- Adds bulk so the fermented mixture forms a workable dough.
The step that matters
Cool the liquid before adding the yeast. Yeast cells are damaged or killed by hot liquid. Letting the mixture cool to room temperature protects the yeast so it can ferment properly the next day.
“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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