Name: Cheap Beer
Ingredients: green shells of peas; water; strong decoction of wood sage or hops

Why it works: Peas and sage work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 204 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Cheap Beer

Ingredients

green shells of peas
water
strong decoction of wood sage or hops

Directions

Make the pea liquid

Fill a boiler with green shells of peas.
Pour water until it rises half an inch above the shells.
Simmer for three hours.
Strain off the liquid.

Finish and ferment

Add a strong decoction of wood sage or hops to make it pleasantly bitter.
Ferment in the usual manner.

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.

Peas + sagetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together204 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Green pea shells: Provide the sweet, vegetal flavour that the simmered liquid carries into the beer.
Wood sage or hops: Add bitterness that balances the sweetness of the pea liquid.

“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.