Name: Spruce Beer
Ingredients: 3 gallons lukewarm water; 1½ cups molasses; 1 tablespoon essence of spruce; 1 tablespoon sugar; ½ cup yeast

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 ↓

Spruce Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

Mix the lukewarm water, molasses, essence of spruce, and sugar together.
Add the yeast and stir well.

Ferment and bottle

Let the mixture stand overnight.
Bottle the mixture in the morning.
It will be ready to use in 24 hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast: Ferments the sugars, producing carbon dioxide that gives the beer its fizz.
Molasses: Supplies fermentable sugar for the yeast and adds dark, rich sweetness.

“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.