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Treacle Beer

A fermented beverage made from treacle, moist sugar, ginger, hops, water, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Treacle Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Combine treacle and moist sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Add bruised ginger and hops.

  3. Pour in 3 quarts of water.

  4. Boil for a few minutes.

  5. Strain the mixture into a large bowl.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add 5 quarts of water.

  2. Mix in the yeast.

  3. Let it sit for 10 to 12 hours to ferment.

  4. Pour into bottles.

  5. Cork them.

  6. Store in a cool place.

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 + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + hopstop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + hopstop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Treacle
Provides sweetness and dark flavour, and sugars that feed the yeast.
Moist sugar
Adds fermentable sugar for the yeast and extra sweetness.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into carbonation and alcohol.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Corking the bottles. Fermentation keeps producing carbon dioxide after bottling. Corked bottles can build pressure and burst if the fermentation is not finished, so bottles should be stored in a cool place.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, hops. 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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