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Drink

Balm Beer

A fermented beverage made from water, brown sugar, egg whites, lemon balm flowers, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Balm Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the wort

  1. Clarify the water and sugar with the egg whites, skim, and boil until nearly reduced to 10 gallons.

  2. Put the lemon balm flowers into a cask.

  3. When the mixture is milk-warm, pour it over the flowers and add the yeast.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Fill the cask morning and evening with what overflows.

  2. Bung the cask when fermentation ceases.

  3. Bottle the beer after one month; it will be ready to drink in 2 to 3 months.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemon balmtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemon balmtop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Provides the fermentable sugar that yeast converts into alcohol and carbonation.
Lemon balm flowers
Supply the lemon aroma and flavour that define this beer.
Yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Egg whites
Bind impurities to the surface during boiling so they can be skimmed off, clarifying the liquid.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture at milk-warm. Yeast works within a limited temperature range. Adding it when the liquid is milk-warm keeps it active, while a hotter liquid can kill it and stall fermentation.

Swap the lemon balm

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Lemon balmthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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