Skip to main content
Drink

Recipe for Making Porter

A dark beer made from malt, hops, treacle, liquorice root, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Recipe for Making Porter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brew

  1. Combine 1 quart of malt with 8 lbs of hops in a large brewing vessel.

  2. Add 9 lbs of treacle and 8 lbs of liquorice root to the mixture.

  3. In a separate pot, prepare 8 lbs of essentia bina by boiling 8 lbs of moist sugar in an iron vessel until it becomes thick and syrupy.

  4. Incorporate the essentia bina into the brewing mixture.

Add the flavourings

  1. Add 8 lbs of colour, ½ oz of capsicum, 2 oz of Spanish licorice, and ¼ oz of cocculus indicus.

  2. Mix in 2 drams of salt of tartar, 3 oz of ginger, 4 oz of lime, 1 oz of linseed, and 2 drams of cinnamon.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Allow the mixture to ferment and then bottle.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,621 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Capsicum + limetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lime + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Capsicum + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Malt
Supplies the fermentable sugars that yeast turns into alcohol and carbonation.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the sugars.
Treacle
Adds dark colour, body and sweetness to the brew.
Moist sugar (in the method)
Adds fermentable sugar and deepens the flavour once boiled to a syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling the essentia bina. Sugar must be boiled until thick and syrupy, because under-cooked syrup adds too much water and may not blend into the brew or ferment as expected.

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (malt, hops, capsicum, ginger, cinnamon):

  1. Mangofits about as well
  2. Limethe original
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against malt, hops, capsicum, ginger, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

More porter recipes

Cup 5Sangaree 3Soda 3 See all 8 →

You might also like

Ginger PopGinger Pop22 recipesGinger WineGinger Wine12 recipesGinger BeerGinger Beer11 recipesCinnamon TinctureCinnamon Tincture10 recipes