Beer and food pairing

A broad category united by aromatic spice and chilli heat — the heat, not the protein, decides the beer.

Fiercely hot and sharply sour — the pairing here is about managing capsaicin, nothing else.

Mild, sweet and creamy, with almond or coconut richness and almost no heat.

Coconut-rich, chilli-hot and aromatic with lemongrass, lime leaf and fish sauce.

Fried protein in a sharply sweet-sour sauce.

Chilli heat combined with the numbing tingle of Szechuan pepper.

Grilled or braised filling with lime, coriander and chilli in a soft tortilla.

A substantial wrapped meal of rice, beans, meat and cheese.

Small salty, savoury plates spanning cured meat, seafood and fried vegetables.

Slow-cooked meat with dried fruit and warm spice — sweet, savoury and aromatic.

Roast meat with potatoes, vegetables and gravy — substantial and deeply savoury.

Roast turkey with stuffing, bacon, sweet trimmings and gravy — a lot of competing flavours.

Cheese, ham, pickle and bread — salt, fat and sharp vinegar together.

Any dish where capsaicin heat is the dominant sensation — the beer must not amplify it.

Anything deep-fried — the pairing problem is fat and salt, whatever is underneath.

Anything cooked over wood smoke — the smoke is the dominant flavour.

Fried eggs, bacon, sausage and toast — fat and salt across the whole plate.

A pub staple of slow-braised beef in gravy under pastry, rich and savoury with a soft, heavy finish.

White fish and often smoked fish in a cream sauce under mashed potato — rich, gentle and lightly savoury.

Sausages, mashed potato and onion gravy: fatty, salty and comforting rather than complex.

Bacon, sausage, egg, black pudding, beans and toast — the fattiest and saltiest plate in British cooking.

Sharp cheese sauce, often made with beer and mustard, grilled onto toast until it blisters.

Sausages baked into Yorkshire pudding batter and served with onion gravy.

Beef, potato, swede and onion in a folded pastry crust, with a pronounced pepper note.

Fried or grilled white fish with lime, cabbage and a chilli-spiked sauce.

Saffron rice with seafood or meat, with a prized caramelised crust at the base.

Layered aubergine, spiced lamb and béchamel, baked until set.

Spit-roasted meat with yoghurt sauce in flatbread, fatty and lightly acidic.

Spit-roasted spiced meat with tahini or garlic sauce, heavily perfumed with cumin and coriander.

Coconut noodle soup with chilli and shrimp paste — rich, hot and deeply savoury.

Breaded fried cutlet over rice with a mild, sweet curry sauce.

Rice with vegetables, egg and gochujang, mixed at the table.

Chips with cheese curds and gravy — the fattiest and saltiest plate in Canadian cooking.

A dark-roux stew with a pronounced pepper and paprika character.

A grain or legume patty in a bun, with the char and salt of its meat counterpart and less fat.

Pasta in a heavy cheese sauce, sometimes baked with a crust.

Spiced Ethiopian stews eaten on a fermented flatbread whose sourness is part of the dish rather than a base for it.

Dense rye bread under cured fish, meat or egg, where the bread is a flavour rather than a base.

A light baguette with pâté, cured pork, pickled vegetables, coriander and chilli — rich and sharp in the same bite.

Dumplings steamed and then fried on one side, so half the wrapper is soft and half is crisp.

Ingredients cooked at the table in a simmering broth, which in the Sichuan version is loaded with chilli and numbing pepper.

Rich, bitter-sweet cocoa with substantial fat and a coating texture.

Very sweet, rich and cocoa-dominated, with a soft, fatty crumb.

Dense, creamy and sweet with a lactic tang.

Baked or fresh fruit with sugar — sweet with real acidity underneath.

Cold, sweet and very fatty — the cold itself dulls whatever it is paired with.

Dense date sponge in toffee sauce — about as sweet as a dessert gets.

Sweet spiced apple in buttery pastry, with acidity from the fruit.

Burnt-sugar sweetness with a faintly bitter edge and often salt.

Custard-soaked bread baked with dried fruit until the top caramelises.

Layered sponge, fruit, custard and cream — sweet, soft and lightly acidic from the fruit.

Sweet spiced dried fruit in short pastry, heavily perfumed with cinnamon, nutmeg and clove.

Fried dough with cinnamon sugar, usually served with thick chocolate.

Coffee-soaked sponge with mascarpone — sweet, creamy and lightly bitter from the coffee.

Banana, toffee and cream in a biscuit base — one of the sweetest desserts there is.

Set custard under a burnt sugar crust, rich and lightly bitter at the top.

Dense chocolate cake with a fudgy centre and a faint bitterness from the cocoa.

Fried sweet dough, sometimes filled, always heavy on sugar and fat together.

Soft batter cakes served with syrup or sugar, where the sweetness is applied on top rather than baked in.

Laminated pastry that is mostly butter and air, rich without being heavy and barely sweet.

A sharp citrus custard in pastry, where acidity is the point and the sugar is there to make it bearable.

Layered filo with nuts and honey syrup, about as sweet as food gets, with nuts and rosewater underneath.

Rice cooked slowly in sweetened milk, mild and creamy, with nothing sharp or bitter anywhere in it.

Crisp meringue with cream and sharp fruit, which is the highest sugar and the highest acidity in the catalogue on one plate.

Golden syrup set with breadcrumbs in pastry, intensely sweet with a faint bitterness from the syrup itself.

Espresso poured over vanilla ice cream, where coffee bitterness is a deliberate part of the dessert rather than a fault.

A cheese board spanning fresh to aged — fat and salt are the constants a beer must handle.

Firm aged cheese with sharp, nutty savoury depth and a salty, crystalline bite.

Intensely salty, pungent, fatty cheese — one of the hardest things to pair with anything.

Rich, buttery bloomy-rind cheese with a mushroomy savoury edge.

Tangy, lactic cheese with a fresh acidity quite unlike cow’s milk cheese.

Pungent, sticky-rinded cheese with an aggressive savoury, almost meaty character.

Melted cheese and toasted bread — fat, salt and Maillard browning together.

A blue cheese of considerable intensity — salty, mineral and pungent, with a crumbly-creamy texture.

A soft bloomy-rind cheese, buttery and mushroomy, with a mild lactic tang.

A hard aged cheese of enormous savoury intensity, salty and granular with a nutty finish.

A firm Dutch cheese that develops butterscotch and caramel sweetness with age.

A firm Spanish sheep cheese, nutty and faintly sharp with a lanolin richness.

A brined cheese that holds its shape on the grill, very salty with a charred crust.

A brined sheep cheese, sharply salty and lactic with a crumbling texture.

A fresh milky cheese with almost no sharpness, valued for texture more than flavour.

A fresh, unaged Indian cheese that does not melt, usually met in a spiced sauce or grilled on a skewer.

Long-aged mountain cheeses — Comté, Gruyère, Emmental — nutty and savoury, with the crystalline crunch that age produces.

A bloomy-rind soft cheese that develops mushroom and ammonia notes as it ripens, and turns liquid when baked.

Unaged cheeses — ricotta, cream cheese, curd — mild and milky, where lactic acidity is the only assertive thing present.

Cheese cold-smoked over wood, where the smoke is usually the loudest thing on the plate.

Melted alpine cheese, eaten hot and by the mouthful, which makes it the most palate-coating thing in the catalogue.

The crumbly regional cheeses — Wensleydale, Cheshire, Lancashire, Caerphilly — lactic and fresh rather than savoury and aged.

Aged sheep’s-milk cheese, saltier and more lanolin-scented than a cow’s-milk equivalent of the same age.

Grilled or pan-fried beef, where charred crust and savoury depth are the flavours a beer has to meet.

Slow-roasted beef with the caramelised savoury depth roasting produces.

Grilled beef with melted cheese and a soft bun — rich, fatty and salty in equal measure.

Long-braised beef in a savoury, reduced sauce with soft vegetables.

Distinctly rich and slightly gamey meat with a fat that coats the palate.

Braised meat in pastry — rich, salty and heavy, with buttery fat from the crust.

Seasoned minced meat in a tomato sauce — savoury with an acidic backbone.

Slow-smoked meat with a sweet, tangy sauce and a heavy smoke character.

Grilled marinated meat with sweet, salty and fermented-chilli accompaniments.

Slow-cooked spiced beef and beans — rich, hot and deeply savoury.

Spiced grilled meat with garlic and chilli sauces in flatbread.

Minced lamb or beef under mashed potato — savoury, soft and filling.

Slow-smoked over hours until the fat renders — the heaviest and smokiest thing on a barbecue.

Smoked for many hours, with a peppery bark and an enormously savoury interior.

Baked minced meat with a sweet glaze, soft and heavily savoury.

Slow-braised lamb in a deep red sauce whose colour comes from mild Kashmiri chilli rather than from heat.

Lamb cooked fast over fire, where char meets a meat that already has a strong flavour of its own.

Beef stewed slowly with a great deal of paprika, where the spice is sweet and earthy rather than hot.

Beef cooked in coconut milk until the liquid has gone entirely and the spice paste has fried in the released oil.

West African grilled beef coated in a groundnut and spice rub, where roasted peanut is as prominent as the chilli.

Offal with softened onions and gravy, minerally and intensely savoury in a way no muscle meat is.

Beef cooked slowly in liquid until the connective tissue has gone to gelatin, rich and soft with no crust to speak of.

Roasted pork with crisp fat, mild and sweet compared with beef or lamb.

Extremely fatty pork, usually with crisp skin — the classic test of a beer’s ability to cut through.

Seasoned pork with high fat and salt, plus herb and pepper spicing.

Cured, usually smoked pork — intensely salty, fatty and savoury.

Cured pork, salty and mildly sweet, often glazed.

Cured and air-dried meats — concentrated salt, fat and fermented savoury depth.

Slow-smoked pork in a sweet, tangy barbecue sauce.

Salty, fatty cured sausage in a soft bun with sharp condiments.

Cured pork in hot-water pastry with jelly — very fatty and salty, eaten cold.

Seasoned pork in flaky pastry — buttery, salty and greasy in the best way.

Breaded fried meat, crisp and greasy, usually served with lemon.

A blood sausage with oatmeal and warm spice, intensely savoury and mineral.

Cured and roasted pork, salty and often glazed sweet.

Paprika-heavy cured pork, oily and pungent, releasing red fat as it cooks.

Slow-smoked pork under a sweet, sticky glaze, where smoke, sugar and rendered fat all arrive together.

Cured and smoked pork sausage, salty and firm, where smoke and salt matter more than the meat.

Pork cutlet in panko crumb, deep-fried, with a thick fruity-savoury brown sauce.

Cured pork in soft bread, where salt and the browned crust do everything and the bread absorbs the rest.

Layered spiced rice with meat or vegetables — aromatic rather than hot.

Sweet, sour and savoury stir-fried noodles with tamarind and fish sauce.

Noodles in a long-simmered savoury broth — salt and umami dominate.

Aromatic beef broth with rice noodles and fresh herbs — savoury but light.

Tomato acidity, salty cheese fat and a charred bread base — three things at once.

Sharp, savoury tomato with herbs over neutral pasta.

Rich cream, cheese and cured pork over pasta — very fatty and salty.

Creamy, buttery rice with parmesan — rich and savoury with a soft texture.

Lye-baked bread with a dark crust and coarse salt.

Deep-fried potato — salty, greasy and hard to stop eating.

Crisp outside, soft inside, and salty enough to be a course of their own.

Rice cooked to a creamy consistency with mushrooms and stock, savoury and soft with nothing crisp anywhere on the plate.

Bread leavened by a wild culture, where lactic acidity and a dark crust are the two flavours to pair.

Filled dough parcels, usually potato and cheese or cabbage, boiled and then fried in butter with onions.

Rice cooked in a tomato and pepper base, with scotch bonnet heat and a smokiness that comes from the pot rather than from a fire.

A whole baked potato with a crisp skin, usually loaded with butter, cheese or beans, and heavy without being rich.

Fermented chilli cabbage — sour, salty, hot and deeply savoury all at once.

Rich avocado with lime and chilli — fatty but fresh.

Fermented cabbage — sharply sour, salty and funky.

Fresh leaves and vegetables with a vinaigrette — light, acidic and green.

Charred vegetables with caramelised sweetness and a smoky edge.

Deeply savoury and earthy, with a meaty texture when cooked hard.

Root vegetables roasted until sweet and caramelised at the edges.

Absorbs fat and takes char extremely well, turning silky and smoky.

Roasted until nutty and browned, with a faint brassica bitterness underneath.

Earthy and distinctly sweet, with a mineral finish that divides opinion.

Sweet, dense squash concentrated further by roasting, where caramelisation rather than the vegetable is the flavour to pair.

Unripe jackfruit stewed into a fibrous texture that resembles pulled pork, almost always in a sweet barbecue sauce.

Sweet peppers roasted until collapsing around a rice or grain filling, mild and gently aromatic.

Vegetables in a deliberately thin, brittle batter, fried so the coating stays light rather than becoming bread.

Beetroot soup soured deliberately, usually with fermented beet juice or vinegar, and finished with soured cream.

Vegetables in vinegar or brine, where acidity is the entire point and everything else is secondary.

Mild, moderately rich roast poultry — a neutral base that most beers can meet.

Deep-fried chicken in a seasoned crust — very fatty, very salty, and in need of cutting through.

Fried wings in a hot, vinegary sauce — fat and capsaicin heat together.

Lean roast poultry, mild and slightly dry, usually served with rich accompaniments.

Rich, fatty poultry with a distinct gamey depth and crisp skin.

Mild, creamy and lightly sweet, with grilled char under a tomato-and-cream sauce.

Scotch bonnet and allspice marinade over charred chicken — hot, aromatic and smoky at once.

Grilled skewers with a sweet, spiced peanut sauce.

Fried chicken wings in a cayenne and butter sauce, where vinegar sharpness and capsaicin arrive together.

Chicken marinated in chilli, garlic, lemon and vinegar and grilled hard, so char and acidity arrive alongside the heat.

Roast duck with lacquered crisp skin, eaten in pancakes with hoisin, spring onion and cucumber.

Meat braised in vinegar, soy, garlic and bay until the sauce reduces to something sharp and intensely savoury.

Plainly grilled chicken, which is the same bird as fried chicken and a completely different pairing problem.

Delicate, mild fish that a heavy or bitter beer will simply overwhelm.

Rich, oily fish with pronounced flavour and a coating texture.

Battered fried fish with chips — the definitive test of a beer’s ability to cut fat.

Cold or hot-smoked fish — salty, oily and dominated by smoke.

Raw fish with vinegared rice — delicate, clean, with acidity from the rice and salt from soy.

Raw fish cured in citrus — sharply acidic, light and fresh.

Cold-smoked and cured, oily and salty with a pronounced smoke character.

A dense, meaty fish usually seared hard outside and left rare within, which puts it closer to steak than to white fish.

Oily fish cured in vinegar and salt, where the acidity is deliberate and dominant rather than incidental.

White fish cooked plainly, which is the most easily overwhelmed thing anyone is likely to pair a beer with.

Cod preserved in salt and rehydrated before cooking, which concentrates the flavour into something far more savoury than fresh fish.

Oily fish split, salted and cold-smoked, which is about as intense as breakfast gets.

Tiny fish floured and fried whole, eaten by the handful, and mostly a salt-and-crunch proposition.

Raw shellfish: intensely saline, mineral and briny, with a soft texture.

Sweet, saline crustacean meat, delicate but with real savoury depth.

Steamed shellfish, usually in a wine or beer broth — saline, savoury and light.

Sweet, briny and firm, and a shellfish that takes strongly to char and to chilli.

Delicately sweet and intensely savoury, easily overwhelmed by anything assertive.

Rich, sweet and firm, usually served with enough butter to make fat the deciding factor.

Sweet and delicate, with a caramelised crust that is most of the point.

Breaded and fried shellfish, a pub staple usually served with tartare sauce and lemon.

Squid in a light coating, fried fast and salted heavily, where the salt and the oil matter more than the seafood.

Shellfish cooked over fire, where char and caramelised shell sit on top of the sweetness raw shellfish has on its own.

Cold prawns in a mayonnaise and tomato sauce, where the dressing rather than the seafood decides the pairing.

Mussels steamed in wine and shallot with fried potatoes, which is two pairing problems served on one table.

Shellfish eaten raw, where salinity and a mineral quality are the whole flavour and there is no cooking to add anything.

Deep-fried spiced pastry — greasy, aromatic and moderately spicy.

Small steamed and fried dumplings — delicate, savoury and varied.

Fried tortilla with melted cheese, chilli and sour cream — salty, fatty and hot.

Cured olives — intensely salty and briny with a bitter edge.

Sausage-wrapped egg in fried breadcrumbs — rich, salty and heavy.

Thin fried potato — very salty and fatty, the default beer snack.

Roasted salted nuts — fatty, salty and toasty.

Fried pork rind, very salty and very fatty, and the archetypal British bar snack.

Filled pastry turnovers, savoury and portable.

Light, salty and buttery, with a toasted note from the popping.

Dried, salted and often smoked beef, concentrated to the point where salt and umami dominate everything else.

Spiced lentils — earthy, savoury and comforting, with gentle heat.

Deep-fried spiced chickpeas — crisp, earthy and herbal.

Creamy chickpea and sesame dip with lemon and garlic.

Thick, earthy and savoury, usually carrying cumin or coriander.

A mild soy curd that takes its character almost entirely from how it is cooked and what it is cooked with.

Chickpeas in a tangy, heavily spiced tomato sauce, where the acidity is as prominent as the heat.

A plant-protein patty built to imitate beef, which makes it a different pairing problem from a vegetable burger.

Soft tofu in a fermented bean sauce with chilli and Sichuan pepper, combining burn with the numbing effect the pepper produces.

Black beans stewed with salted and smoked pork cuts, dense and deeply savoury, served with orange and greens.

Sharply acidic preserved vegetables, often with sweetness and spice.

A long-cooked Mexican sauce of dried chillies, nuts, spices and a little chocolate, where the sauce entirely decides the pairing.

The nasal heat of horseradish, mustard and wasabi, which is a different sensation from chilli and behaves differently with beer.

Soy reduced with sugar into a glaze, which puts intense salt and caramelisation on whatever it coats.

A fried egg with a liquid yolk, where the yolk coats everything it touches and the sulphur underneath is what a beer has to survive.

Set egg, plain or filled, mild and savoury with a texture that offers a beer almost nothing to work against.

Poached egg and hollandaise on muffin, which is butter and yolk emulsified twice over and the richest thing on any breakfast menu.

Eggs baked into a spiced tomato and pepper sauce, where the tomato acidity leads and the egg softens it.

Lean, deeply flavoured game meat, usually served with something sweet and fruity.

Lean, savoury birds with a pronounced gamey character.