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Balm Beer

A beer brewed with lemon balm, brown sugar, egg whites, 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 the water and brown sugar with the egg whites, skimming carefully.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reduces to nearly 10 gallons.

Ferment

  1. Place the lemon balm flower into a cask.

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

  3. Add the thick yeast to the cask.

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

  5. Bung the cask when fermentation ceases.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the beer after one month.

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 turns into alcohol and carbonation.
Lemon balm flower
Contributes the main aroma and flavour of the beer.
Thick yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Egg whites
Bind to impurities during clarifying so they can be skimmed off, leaving a clearer liquor.

The step that matters

Pour the milk-warm liquor over the lemon balm. The liquor must be warm enough to help yeast activity and extract flavour, but not hot enough to kill the yeast or spoil the aroma. Milk-warm is a gentle temperature that balances these needs.

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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