Name: Substitute for Table-beer
Ingredients: 2 gallons of water; 1 bottle of porter; 1 pound of brown sugar; 1 spoonful of ginger (optional)

Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Substitute for Table-beer

2 gallons

Ingredients

2 gallons of water
1 bottle of porter
1 pound of brown sugar
1 spoonful of ginger (optional)

Directions

Mix the porter with the water and brown sugar until well combined.
Bottle the mixture and keep it loosely corked in a warm cellar.
After three days, it will be ready for use.
For a livelier taste, add a spoonful of ginger 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.

Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Porter: Provides the main malty, roasted flavour that defines the beer.
Brown sugar: Supplies sugar for the yeast to ferment, adding sweetness and body.

“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.