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Drink

Ginger Pop

A fermented ginger beverage made with sugar, ginger, lemon, yeast, and wintergreen or sassafras.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Ginger Pop

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 ↓

Ginger Pop

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brew

  1. In a pan, combine the sugar, cream of tartar, ground ginger, and juice of the lemon.

  2. Pour 4 quarts of boiling water over the mixture and let it cool to lukewarm.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add the yeast and essence of wintergreen or sassafras.

  2. Let it sit for 24 hours, then bottle it.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cream + gingertop 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

White sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that gives the drink a tart flavor.
Lemon
Its juice adds sharp citrus acidity and brightness.
Ground ginger
Gives the drink its spicy aroma and warm flavor.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbon dioxide for fizz.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool to lukewarm before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the water must cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes in. Fermentation also builds pressure in sealed bottles, so bottling after the full 24 hours matters for a controlled result.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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