Emptins

History

Emptins is Amelia Simmons's recipe for making yeast at home: a handful of hops boiled about fifteen minutes in three quarts of water, thickened as one would for starch, strained, and then, once cold, seeded with a little emptins saved from an earlier batch to set it working. Corked in a bottle it kept five or six weeks. The name is a New England softening of 'emptyings,' the yeasty dregs left in a beer or cider cask, and it was an exclusively American word for the leaven the English called ale yeast or barm. Built from hops and those cask dregs, emptins was the common rising agent for households far from a brewery, distillery, or bakery, in the years before compressed commercial yeast. Like a sourdough it renewed itself, each batch born from a spoonful of the last, which is why Simmons's own spruce beer calls for half a pint of emptins to start it working. The record keeps little more than the method: it does not tell us how a cook nursed a starter through a lean winter, or precisely which of the book's breads and cakes were raised on it.

Ingredients

• 1 handful hops
• 3 quarts water
• thickening
• emptins

Instructions

1. Boil a handful of hops in about three quarts of water for about fifteen minutes.
2. Make a thickening as you would for starch.
3. Strain the liquor.
4. When cold, add a little emptins to set it working.
5. Keep it well corked in a bottle; it will last five or six weeks.