Skip to main content
Drink

An Excellent Summer Beer

A fermented beverage made from burdock seeds, dandelion roots, butternut bark, sassafras root bark, ginger, molasses, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Burdock and dandelion share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

An Excellent Summer Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brew

  1. Boil burdock seeds, dandelion roots, butternut bark, and sassafras root bark in 2 gallons of water for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the mixture through fine cloth.

  3. Stir in ginger and molasses.

Ferment and store

  1. Add the yeast and skim off any foam that rises during fermentation.

  2. Cork the mixture tightly once it is clear.

  3. Store in a cool place after fermentation.

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. Burdock + dandeliontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Dandelion + butternuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Burdock + butternuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1 recipe

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butternut + gingertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Burdock + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides sweetness and food for the yeast to ferment into alcohol and carbonation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide that give the beer its fizz.
Burdock seeds
Contribute bitter and earthy flavour from the boiled infusion.
Dandelion roots
Add bitterness and herbal flavour to the liquid.
Butternut bark
Adds bitter, woody flavour to the infused liquid.
Sassafras root bark
Adds a distinctive aromatic, root-beer-like flavour.

The step that matters

Corking once clear. Corking too early, before fermentation has finished, can trap carbon dioxide and build pressure that may burst the container. Waiting until the liquid is clear shows the yeast has settled and fermentation is largely done.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (burdock, dandelion, butternut, molasses):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against burdock, dandelion, butternut, molasses. 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.

You might also like

Ginger PopGinger Pop22 recipesGinger WineGinger Wine12 recipesGinger BeerGinger Beer11 recipesGinger TeaGinger Tea9 recipes