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Drink

Parisian Barm

A traditional Parisian brew made by steeping malt, boiling hops, and mixing with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Malt and flour work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Parisian Barm

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Ensure the barm tub is clean and dry.

Steep the malt

  1. Combine 1 gallon of heated water with 2 pounds of crushed malt in a pan and cover the pan.

  2. Steep for 3 hours.

Boil the hops

  1. Boil 3 gallons of water in a large pan.

  2. Add 2 ounces of fresh hops to the boiling water.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes.

Combine

  1. Strain the malt water into the barm tub using a hair sieve, squeezing out all liquid from the malt.

  2. Stir in as much flour as possible using a barm stick.

  3. Pour the boiling hop water through a sieve into the malt mixture.

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. Malt + flourtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. Malt + hopstop 49% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1 recipe

    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

Crushed malt
Supplies sugars and enzymes that feed the yeast and give the barm its sweet, malty flavour.
Fresh hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the malt's sweetness.
Flour
Adds starch and body, thickening the liquid into a stiff starter that yeast can live in.

“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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