Name: Beer
Ingredients: ½ bushel malt; 4 pounds treacle; ¾ pound hops

Why it works: Malt and hops work together. They rank in the top 49% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Beer

25 gallons of liquid

Ingredients

½ bushel malt
4 pounds treacle
¾ pound hops

Directions

Prepare

Combine malt, treacle, and hops in a large container.
Add enough water to make 25 gallons of liquid.

Ferment and bottle

Allow the mixture to ferment for 2 weeks.
Bottle the beer and store it in a cool place.

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.

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

Malt: Provides the sugars that yeast ferments into alcohol, and the main body of the beer.
Treacle: Adds extra fermentable sugar, boosting alcohol and a deeper, sweeter flavour.
Hops: Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the malt and treacle.

“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.