Name: Parisian Barm
Ingredients: 1 gallon water; 2 lbs crushed malt; 3 gallons water; 2 oz fresh hops; flour (as needed)

Why it works: Malt and flour work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Parisian Barm

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the malt

Heat 1 gallon of water to 140°F (60°C) in a pan.
Add 2 lbs of crushed malt to the water and cover for 3 hours.

Make the hop water

Heat 3 gallons of water in a large pan until boiling.
Add 2 oz of fresh hops to the boiling water and boil for 20 minutes.

Combine and finish

Strain the malt through a fine sieve into the barm tub.
Add enough flour to the mixture as needed.

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 + flourtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together260 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10 recipes

Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
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

Crushed malt: Supplies starches that enzymes convert into fermentable sugars during the long warm soak.
Fresh hops: Add bitterness and aroma, and help inhibit unwanted microbes in the liquid.
Flour: Adds starch that thickens the mixture and gives the yeast additional food to work on.

The step that matters

Holding the malt at 140°F for 3 hours. At about 140°F, malt enzymes break starches into sugars the yeast can ferment. Water much hotter can denature these enzymes and stop the conversion, while cooler water converts more slowly, so the temperature needs to stay steady during the soak.

“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.