Name: To Fine Beer
Ingredients: 3 pints wheat; 3 pints wheat-malt; 2-3 pounds oyster shells

Why it works: Wheat and malt work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Fine Beer

Ingredients

3 pints wheat
3 pints wheat-malt
2-3 pounds oyster shells

Directions

Open the bung-hole of the cask for 2-3 days to stop fermentation.
If fermentation continues, wash and dry oyster shells in an oven, then beat them to a fine powder.
Stir the powdered oyster shells into the cask to settle the liquor and improve its taste.
Once settled, draw the beer into another vessel and add a small bag of wheat or wheat-malt.

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.

Wheat + malttop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together64 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Wheat + oystertop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together76 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Malt + oystertop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Oyster shells: Powdered shell is stirred in to help settle the liquid and improve its taste.
Wheat: A small bag of wheat is added to the drawn beer as a finishing ingredient.
Wheat-malt: A small bag of wheat-malt is added to the drawn beer as a finishing ingredient.

“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.