Name: Birch Beer
Ingredients: 1 gallon simple syrup; 2 ounces birch beer extract; ½ ounce soda foam; caramel color (for coloring)

Why it works: Syrup and beer work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Birch Beer

Ingredients

1 gallon simple syrup
2 ounces birch beer extract
½ ounce soda foam
caramel color (for coloring)

Directions

Combine the simple syrup and birch beer extract in a large container.
Add the soda foam and mix well.
Color the mixture with caramel color to your desired shade.
Chill before serving.

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.

Syrup + beertop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Simple syrup: Provides the sweetness and body that carry the birch beer flavour.
Birch beer extract: Supplies the main birch beer flavour and aroma.
Soda foam: Adds a light, foamy texture and carbonation to the drink.

“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.