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Treacle Beer

A fermented beverage made by boiling water, adding treacle, cold water, yeast, and optionally hops and malt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tea and malt work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Treacle Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Boil 2 quarts of water.

  2. Stir in 1 pound of treacle until well mixed.

Ferment

  1. Add 6-8 quarts of cold water and 1 tea-cup of yeast.

  2. Transfer to a clean cask and cover with a coarse cloth.

  3. Let it sit for 2-3 days until ready to drink.

  4. For larger batches, add a handful of hops and malt for fermentation.

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. Tea + malttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14 recipes

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

  2. Molasses + teatop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + malttop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together20 recipes
  4. Tea + hopstop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1 recipe

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Molasses + hopstop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Treacle or molasses
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments, and the dark color and sweet flavor of the beer.
Yeast or barm
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, carbonating and flavoring the beer.

“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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