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Drink

Ginger Imperial

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger 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 ↓

Ginger Imperial

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brew

  1. Boil cream of tartar, lemon rind, lemon juice, bruised ginger, and sugar in water for half an hour.

  2. Allow the mixture to cool.

  3. Add yeast and let it stand for 24 hours.

Bottle and rest

  1. Bottle in half-pint bottles and tie down the corks.

  2. It will be ready in three days.

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

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

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

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

  3. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Cream + gingertop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

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

Ginger and sugar 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

Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing gas and the lightly fizzy character of the drink.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished drink.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity, giving the drink a tart, tangy edge.
Lemons
Add acidity and citrus aroma from the rind and juice.
Ginger
Contributes its spicy, aromatic flavour to the drink.

The step that matters

Bottle in half-pint bottles and tie down the corks. Fermentation continues in sealed bottles and produces carbon dioxide, so the corks must be secured to hold the pressure rather than blow out.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, ginger, 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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