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Drink

Hop Beer

A fermented beverage made by boiling hops, ginger, molasses, and bread in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,116 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Hop Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

  1. Boil 6 ounces of hops in 5 quarts of water for 3 hours.

  2. Strain the liquid and add 4 quarts of water and 1 cup of ginger; boil for another 3 hours.

Finish the beer

  1. Strain again and mix with the first liquid, then stir in 2 quarts of molasses.

  2. Brown ½ pound of bread slowly until dry, then add it to the mixture to enrich the beer.

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. Ginger + molassestop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Ginger + breadtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Hops + gingertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Molasses + breadtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Hops + molassestop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the molasses.
Molasses
Provides sugars for fermentation and a dark, rich sweetness.
Ginger
Adds a sharp, warm aroma and spicy flavour to the liquid.
Bread
Browned bread adds toasty flavour and body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Browning the bread. Bread browned slowly until fully dry toasts evenly without burning. Scorched bread turns bitter and can spoil the flavour of the whole batch.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hops, molasses, bread):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, molasses, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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