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Drink

Hot Beer

A warm beverage made by heating beer with milk, egg yolks, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beer and milk work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 298 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Hot Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the beer in one vessel and the milk in another.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until light.

Combine and serve

  1. Gradually add the hot milk to the egg mixture, stirring constantly.

  2. Then add the boiling beer, stirring continuously.

  3. Serve immediately in glasses.

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. Beer + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Beer + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together699 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beer
Provides the main liquid and the characteristic bitter, malty flavour.
Milk
Adds liquid and richness, giving the drink a creamy body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they heat, giving it a smooth, custard-like body.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and helps the beaten yolks become light and smooth.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the hot milk to the egg yolks. Adding hot liquid slowly while stirring constantly warms the yolks gently. Pouring it in too fast can scramble the egg proteins into lumps.

“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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