Hops, 1 “large handful”
2 qts water, boiling
3 pints flour, sifted
1/2 pint brewer’s yeast, straight from brewery
4-5 teaspoons brown sugar OR 4-5 tablespoons molasses (optional)

Put a large handful of hops into two quarts of boiling water, which must then be set on the fire again, and boiled twenty minutes with the hops. Have ready in a pan three pints of sifted flour; strain the liquid, and pour half of it on the flour. Let the other half stand till it becomes cool, and then mix it gradually into the pan with the flour &c. Then stir into it half a pint of good strong yeast, fresh from the brewery if possible; if not, use some that was left of the last making [of yeast]. You may increase the strength by stirring into your yeast before you bottle it, four or five large tea-spoonfuls of brown sugar, or as many table-spoonfuls of molasses.

Put it into clean bottles, and cork them loosely till the fermentation is over. Next morning put in the corks tightly, and set the bottles in a cold place. When you are going to bottle the yeast it will be an improvement to place two or three raisins at the bottom of each bottle. It is best to make yeast very frequently; as, with every precaution, it will scarcely keep good a week, even in cold weather. If you are apprehensive ot its becoming sour, put into each bottle a lump of pearl-ash the size of a hazle-nut.

From Miss Leslie’s Directions for Cookery, Eliza Leslie, Philadelphia, 1851

Comment: Yeast is a living organism. You cannot “create” yeast if you have none to start with, you can only provide the food a little yeast needs to reproduce and become a lot of yeast. If lack of nearby breweries, shortage of neighbors or utter destitution keeps you from obtaining a sample of existing yeast your only hope is to combine the listed ingredients and put them in an open bowl in the windowsill in hopes of attracting a wild yeast to settle in and take up housekeeping. This is how sourdough starter is obtained, and its name should give you a hint as to the usual results.

Following Miss Leslie’s instructions, even if you must start with a packet of dehydrated yeast as commonly sold in stores, will set you on the path to having your own fresh yeast in the form it was used from the start of recorded history up to very recent times. This explains the instructions common in period recipes for baked goods to use yeast in quantities ranging from a teacup to multiple pints. What you are really starting with is what is today known as a “sponge” so if you are attempting to duplicate modern recipes in the historic style, start at that point of the recipe and carry on from there.

All the suggested additions–sugar or molasses, and raisins–are essentially boosters. Yeast will feed directly on the sugars in each, and raisins (of that time) would probably have added a bit of additonal yeast of the wild sort to the mixture, which adhered to the grapes while they were in the process of being dried.