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Drink

White Beer

A sweet spiced beverage made with cinnamon, cloves, ginger, sugar, yeast, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

White Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil cinnamon and cloves in 2 quarts of water.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the ginger, sugar, and cream of tartar.

  3. Add the remaining 8 quarts of water and stir well.

  4. Add the yeast and mix thoroughly.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Set the mixture in the sun and let it stand for one day and night.

  2. Afterward, bottle the mixture.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Yeast
Starts fermentation, converting sugar into carbon dioxide and alcohol to make the drink fizzy.
Sugar
Provides the fermentable sugar that yeast consumes, and sweetness in the finished drink.
Ginger
Adds a spicy, aromatic flavour to the drink.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity, which helps keep the mixture's flavour balanced and bright.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast. Yeast must be fully mixed in so it is evenly distributed and can ferment the sugar throughout the liquid. Poorly dispersed yeast leads to uneven or sluggish fermentation.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

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