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Drink

Plantation Beer

A fermented beverage made with sweet fern, sarsaparilla, wintergreen, sassafras, prince pine, spicewood, hops, molasses, bread, yeast, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Plantation Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herbs

  1. Grind the sweet fern, sarsaparilla, wintergreen, sassafras, prince pine, and spicewood in a spice mill.

  2. Heat 8 gallons of water and add the ground ingredients; boil for about 1 hour.

  3. Strain the mixture, then boil 4 pounds of hops in 3 gallons of water and strain it as well.

  4. Mix the two decoctions together and add 1 gallon of molasses.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Soak the small loaf of bread in fresh brewers' yeast and add it to the mixture in a 10-gallon keg.

  2. Once fermentation is complete, beat the egg white to a froth and mix it with the beer.

  3. Bung up the keg and let it stand until clear, then bottle for use.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Pine + breadtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Molasses + breadtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Pine + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Molasses + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,879 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the molasses.
Molasses
Provides sugar for the yeast to ferment and adds sweetness and body.
Fresh brewers' yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and carbonation in the beer.
Egg white
Its proteins bind to particles as they settle, helping the beer clear.

The step that matters

Letting the beer stand until clear. Clarity depends on time for suspended particles to settle and for the egg white to bind them. Bottling before the beer has cleared can leave cloudiness and sediment, and rushing this stage affects the final appearance and texture.

“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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