Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓
Ready Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
In a pitcher, combine sugar, flour, and water; stir well.
Add hop yeast or leaven mixture and set in a warm place to rise.
Before it sours, mix the same quantity of sugar, flour, and water, and add to the pitcher. Set it to rise again.
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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Sugar + flourtop 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
- Hop yeast or leaven
- Provides the live microbes that ferment the starter and make it rise.
- Flour
- Supplies the starch that the microbes feed on, building the starter's bulk.
- Sugar
- Gives the yeast and bacteria quick food, driving fermentation and gas production.
The step that matters
Feeding before it sours. Adding fresh sugar, flour, and water before the starter turns sour keeps the yeast active. Once it sours, the culture is weakened and may not rise well.
“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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