Name: To Preserve, and Recover Beer, When Flat
Ingredients: 1 pint water; ½ ounce unslaked lime; ½ ounce isinglass, cut small; a little water; 1 quart French brandy; wheat or bean flour

Why it works: Lime and wheat share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 96 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Preserve, and Recover Beer, When Flat

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the water and unslaked lime well and let it stand for three hours to settle.
Pour off the clear liquid and mix it with the isinglass boiled in a little water.
Pour the mixture into the barrel and wait five to six hours for the beer to clarify.
If the beer appears to fret during stormy weather, draw out the bung and let it rest for several days.

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.

Lime + wheattop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together96 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lime + brandytop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together165 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Brandy + wheattop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53 recipes

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