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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 liquor

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

Ferment

  1. Add lemon balm flower to a cask.

  2. Pour in the milk-warm liquor and add yeast.

  3. Fill the cask morning and evening with overflow until fermentation ceases.

Bottle and age

  1. Bung up the cask and after a month, bottle the beer.

  2. It will be ready to drink in 2-3 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.
Egg whites
Bind impurities to the liquid during clarifying so they can be skimmed off.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the brew.
Lemon balm flower
Contributes the herbal, lemony aroma and flavour to the finished beer.

The step that matters

Fill the cask morning and evening with overflow. Topping up keeps the cask full so less air contacts the liquid, limiting oxidation and spoilage while fermentation continues until it stops.

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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