Skip to main content
Drink

Ginger Beer No. 1

A fermented ginger beverage made with sugar, lemon, ginger, cream of tartar, milk, egg white, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Beer No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Bruise the ginger and slice the lemons.

  2. Combine ginger, lemon, and cream of tartar in a large jar.

  3. Boil the sugar in 3 gallons of water and pour it boiling over the jar's contents.

Add the milk and yeast

  1. Warm the milk and add the whipped egg white.

  2. Stir in the yeast and mix well.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Let the mixture stand overnight.

  2. Skim, strain, and bottle the ginger beer.

  3. It will be ready in 2 to 3 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbonation and the characteristic fizz.
Sugar
Provides the sweetness and the food the yeast ferments.
Ginger
Supplies the spicy, aromatic flavour that defines the drink.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright citrus flavour to balance the sweetness.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps keep the mixture stable and tangy.
Egg white
Whipped and added to help clarify the liquid as it settles.

The step that matters

Stir in the yeast and mix well. Yeast must be evenly dispersed through the warm liquid so fermentation proceeds uniformly. Clumps left unmixed can ferment unevenly and affect carbonation and flavour.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, cream, milk, egg. 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.

More ginger beer recipes

Powder 9American 4Lemon 4English 3Molasses 3 See all 226 →

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesGinger PopGinger Pop22 recipesGinger WineGinger Wine12 recipes