Name: Virgin Barm
Ingredients: 10 lbs malt; 3 oz hops; 40 lbs flour (1/3 American Spring straight and 2/3 Talavera wheat flour or sound red Winter); 2 or 3 oz salt; 8 or 12 oz sugar; a handful of flour; about 18 gallons boiling water

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Virgin Barm

Ingredients

10 lbs malt
3 oz hops
40 lbs flour (1/3 American Spring straight and 2/3 Talavera wheat flour or sound red Winter)
2 or 3 oz salt
8 or 12 oz sugar
a handful of flour
about 18 gallons boiling water

Directions

Prepare

Infuse the hops in a jar with boiling water.
In a large tub, mash the malt with boiling water.
Add the flour, salt, and sugar to the tub. Mix thoroughly until combined.

Ferment

Allow the mixture to ferment until it becomes barm.

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.

Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Malt + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together325 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Malt + flourtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together260 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10 recipes

Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6 recipes

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

Malt: Supplies starches that break down into sugars for the yeast to ferment.
Hops: Add bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the brew.
Flour: Adds body and starches that give the mixture substance for fermentation.
Sugar: Provides readily fermentable sugar that feeds the yeast and drives fermentation.

“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.