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A Strong Ginger-beer

A fermented ginger beer made with water, sugar, ginger, lemon, cream of tartar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Strong Ginger-beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liquid

  1. Boil 2 lbs of loaf sugar and 1 oz of bruised ginger with 1 gallon of water.

  2. Add 1 oz of cream of tartar and the sliced lemon to the mixture.

  3. Cool the mixture and add some yeast.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Set the mixture aside for fermentation until the fermentation is over.

  2. Bottle the liquid after fermentation is complete.

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 + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Ginger + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Loaf sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast converts into carbon dioxide and alcohol during fermentation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing the carbonation and the drink's character.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity, which brightens the flavour and helps keep the brew stable.
Bruised ginger
Supplies the spicy aroma and flavour that define the drink.

The step that matters

Bottle only after fermentation is complete. If bottled too early, sugar still present can keep fermenting inside sealed bottles, building pressure that can burst them. Waiting until fermentation has finished keeps the carbonation under control.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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