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Domestic Ginger Beer

A homemade fermented ginger beverage made with water, ginger, sugar, 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 ↓

Domestic Ginger Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ginger syrup

  1. Put 2 gallons of cold water in a pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Add 2 ounces of ginger and 2 pounds of sugar; boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Skim the liquid and pour it into a jar.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add 1 sliced lemon and 1 ounce of cream of tartar.

  2. When nearly cool, stir in 1 teacupful of yeast.

  3. Let it work for 2 days.

  4. Strain into bottles, cork tightly, and tie the corks down firmly.

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. Ginger + sugartop 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).

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 carbonation and the drink's fizz.
Sugar
Provides the fermentable sugar that yeast converts into gas and alcohol.
Ginger
Supplies the spicy, aromatic flavour that defines the drink.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that gives a tangy taste and helps keep the brew stable.
Lemon
Adds citrus acidity and brightness to balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir in the yeast when nearly cool. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so adding it too early can stop fermentation. Waiting until the liquid is nearly cool lets the yeast survive and start working.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, sugar, 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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