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To Make Yeast

A method for producing yeast by fermenting a mixture of water, hops, flour, malt, and stock yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and malt work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Make Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop water

  1. Boil water in a kettle.

  2. Add hops to the boiling water and boil for a while.

Make the starter

  1. In a yeast tub, combine flour with enough hot hop-water to make a paste, ensuring no lumps remain.

  2. Strain the boiled hops into the yeast tub.

  3. Stir with a wooden paddle until well mixed.

  4. Let the mixture cool to blood heat.

Ferment

  1. Add cracked malt and stock yeast, and mix well to prevent lumps.

  2. Cover the mixture.

  3. Let it sit in a warm place for 15 hours before straining.

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. Flour + malttop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. Hops + malttop 49% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1 recipe

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the paste that gives the starter its body and provides food for the yeast.
Stock yeast
Ferments the mixture, producing carbon dioxide and flavour compounds as it works.
Cracked malt
Supplies sugars and starches that the yeast feeds on during fermentation.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and their compounds help keep the starter stable.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture to blood heat before adding the yeast. Yeast cells are damaged or killed by very hot liquid. Cooling the mixture to about body temperature lets the yeast survive and begin fermenting steadily.

“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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