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Strengthening Beer

A beer brewed with orange peel, Virginia snake-root, Peruvian bark, water, molasses, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and molasses work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 493 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Strengthening Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the decoction

  1. Combine orange peel, Virginia snake-root, and Peruvian bark in a pot with 6 quarts of water.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reduces to 4 quarts.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Remove from heat and add 1 pint of molasses and 1 pint of yeast.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours before bottling.

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. Orange + molassestop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together493 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides sugar that the yeast ferments, adding sweetness and body to the finished drink.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide that give the drink its fizz.
Peruvian bark
Contributes a strong bitterness that balances the sweetness of the molasses.
Orange peel
Adds citrus aroma and a light bitter edge to the liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast after removing from heat. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid. Adding it only after the mixture has come off the heat and cooled enough protects the cells so they can ferment the sugars during the 24-hour stand.

“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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