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Drink

Ginger Beer

A fermented beverage made from boiling water, sugar, ginger, lemon, 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 Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a stone jar, combine boiling water, white sugar, cream of tartar, juice of lemons, and grated green ginger.

  2. Let the mixture stand until it is warm to the touch.

  3. Stir in the yeast.

  4. Prepare the mixture around dusk.

  5. Let it sit overnight.

Bottle and seal

  1. In the morning, bottle the ginger beer.

  2. Boil the corks in water.

  3. Squeeze them with a lemon squeezer before inserting them into the bottles.

  4. Seal the bottles tightly.

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. 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

Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbonation and the drink's characteristic fizz.
White sugar
Provides the food for yeast fermentation and the drink's sweetness.
Green ginger
Supplies the sharp, spicy flavour that defines the drink.
Lemons
Add acidity and citrus brightness that balances the sweetness.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps keep the mixture balanced and tangy.

The step that matters

Seal the bottles tightly. Yeast keeps fermenting and releasing carbon dioxide after bottling. If the bottles or corks are loose, the gas escapes and the ginger beer stays flat, while pressure building in sealed bottles can cause them to burst.

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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