Name: To Make Cottage Beer
Ingredients: 1/4 peck (about 9.5 cups) good white bran; 10 gallons water; 3 handfuls hops; 2 quarts molasses; 2 tablespoons yeast; white sugar (for bottling)

Why it works: Molasses and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Make Cottage Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brew

Combine the bran and water in a large pot.
Add the hops and boil until the bran and hops sink to the bottom.
Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a cooler.
When lukewarm, stir in the molasses until fully incorporated.

Ferment and bottle

Pour the mixture into a 9-gallon cask and add the yeast.
Once fermentation subsides, seal the cask.
After four days, the beer is ready to use.
For table beer, transfer to stone jars with a lump of white sugar in each and cork securely.

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.

Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,225 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Hops + molassestop 41% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5 recipes
Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6 recipes

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

Yeast: Ferments the sugars in the molasses, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide that give the beer its character.
Molasses: Supplies the sugars that the yeast ferments, and adds dark sweetness and flavour.
Hops: Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the molasses.
White bran: Provides starches and grain flavour for the brew, and its solids settle out during boiling.

“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.