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Bread

Scotch Flour Barms

A thick batter of malt, flour, and water, cooled to 80–90 °F in winter or 60–70 °F in summer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Scotch Flour Barms

Ingredients

Directions

Mash

  1. Mash the water with the crushed malt for 3.5 to 4 hours in a warm place.

  2. Transfer to a malt press and draw off the wort.

Make the batter

  1. Add 3 pints of water to the wort to bring it up to 120°F.

  2. Stir in 112 lbs of flour to form a batter.

  3. Gradually stir in 40 pints of boiling water, 4 pints at a time.

  4. Add the last 8 pints when the mixture begins to liquefy.

Cool

  1. Cool the mixture until it reaches between 80°F and 90°F in winter, or 60°F and 70°F in summer.

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. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Malt + wheattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Crushed malt
Its enzymes convert starch into sugars during the long warm mash, feeding the later stages.
Flour
Its starch thickens the mixture into a batter and gives it body.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the boiling water. Adding the boiling water a little at a time lets the flour disperse evenly. Pouring it in all at once tends to form lumps, because the outer flour hydrates and seals before the inside can wet through.

“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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