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Schaumhier — Frothed Beer

A frothy beer drink made with eggs, lemon, sugar, ginger, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Schaumhier — Frothed Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Whisk the eggs well with some of the beer gradually.

  2. Rasp off the yellow of the lemon with some sugar lumps.

  3. In an enamelled stew-pan, combine all the sugar and squeeze the lemon juice over it, removing the seeds.

Heat and serve

  1. Add the remaining ingredients and whisk over the fire until scalding hot, but do not let it boil to avoid curdling.

  2. Continue whisking until served in tumblers.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Egg proteins set when heated, thickening the drink and giving it a frothy, creamy body.
Ale
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the other ingredients.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the sharpness of the lemon and beer.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma from the juice and zest, brightening the sweet, rich mixture.

The step that matters

Heat without boiling. Egg proteins set and curdle when overheated, so the mixture should be heated only until scalding hot and never allowed to boil. Continuous whisking keeps the heat even and the texture smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Orangefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, ginger, cinnamon. 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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