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Drink

Almond Bloom

A fermented herbal drink made from spruce, hemlock, sarsaparilla bark, yellow dock, burdock, dandelion, sugar, yeast, and spruce and sassafras oils.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Dock and burdock share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Almond Bloom

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brew

  1. Boil 1 gallon of water with 4 oz each of spruce, hemlock, sarsaparilla bark, yellow dock, burdock, and dandelion for ½ hour.

  2. Strain the mixture while hot.

  3. Add 10 drops each of oil of spruce and oil of sassafras.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Once cooled, stir in ½ lb of brown sugar and ½ cup of yeast.

  2. Cover tightly and let it stand for 12 hours.

  3. Bottle the mixture and use it as an iced drink whenever desired.

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. Dock + burdocktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together22 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Dandelion + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Burdock + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbonation and the ale's fizz.
Brown sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and molasses flavour.
Spruce
Contributes the bitter, resinous flavour that defines the ale.
Sarsaparilla bark
Adds its characteristic root flavour to the brew.

The step that matters

Cooling before adding yeast. Yeast is killed or stressed by hot liquid, so the mixture must cool before the yeast is stirred in. Adding it too early can stop fermentation entirely.

“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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