Name: Unfermented Beer
Ingredients: 1 cup bran; 1 slice toasted black bread; 1 quart water; 1 stick cinnamon

Why it works: Bread and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,705 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Unfermented Beer

Ingredients

1 cup bran
1 slice toasted black bread
1 quart water
1 stick cinnamon

Directions

Soak the bran and toasted black bread in water for several hours.
Add the stick of cinnamon and bring to a boil.
Let it simmer slowly for 20 minutes or longer.
Strain and serve hot or cold.

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.

Bread + cinnamontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,705 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Bran: Adds earthy flavour and body to the liquid as it soaks and simmers.
Toasted black bread: Contributes toasty, roasted flavour and colour to the liquid.
Cinnamon: Adds warm, sweet aroma to the finished drink.

“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.