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Drink

Balm Beer

A fermented beverage made from water, brown sugar, egg whites, lemon balm, 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 11 gallons of water with the whites of 12 eggs and skim carefully.

  2. Boil the mixture until nearly reduced to 10 gallons.

Ferment

  1. Put 2.5 pounds of lemon balm into a cask.

  2. Pour the milk-warm liquor over the lemon balm.

  3. Add 4 to 5 tablespoons of thick yeast.

  4. Fill the cask morning and evening with what works over it.

  5. Bung up the cask when fermentation ceases.

Bottle and mature

  1. Bottle the beer after one month; it will be ready to drink in 2 to 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

Whites of 12 eggs
Egg whites collect impurities as they set during boiling, so they can be skimmed off to clarify the liquor.
Yellow flower of lemon balm
Provides the lemon-balm aroma and flavour that characterises this beer.
Thick yeast
Converts the sugars in the liquor into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Brown sugar
Supplies the fermentable sugar that the yeast converts into alcohol.

The step that matters

Skim the clarifying egg whites carefully. Egg whites bind impurities and rise to the surface as they set. Skimming them thoroughly removes these particles, so the liquor stays clear and free of off-flavours during fermentation.

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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