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Splendid Ginger Beer

A fermented beverage made from sugar, tartaric acid, cream of tartar, yeast, citrus, ginger, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Splendid Ginger Beer

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Splendid Ginger Beer

7 gallons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve 30 pounds of sugar, ½ pound of tartaric acid, and 1½ pounds of cream of tartar in warm water.

  2. Add enough soft water to make 7 gallons.

  3. Bruise the Seville oranges and ginger.

  4. Let them stand overnight.

  5. Rinse a cask with brandy.

Make the liquor

  1. Add the whites of the eggs.

  2. Peel the fruit.

  3. Extract the juice.

  4. Boil the water with ginger and sugar.

  5. Pour the boiling mixture over the peel.

  6. Add a little yeast.

  7. Let it stand for three days, stirring twice a day.

Ferment and age

  1. Transfer to the cask with raisins and isinglass.

  2. Stir twice a day for 10 days.

  3. Do not stop until fermentation ceases.

  4. It will be ready for use in three months.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

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

  3. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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
Starts fermentation, turning the sugars into carbon dioxide and alcohol.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps keep the sugar from crystallising.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the drink and supports the fermentation.
Isinglass
A fining agent that helps clear the finished drink by settling out suspended particles.

The step that matters

Stir twice a day until fermentation ceases. Stirring keeps yeast in contact with the sugars and releases carbon dioxide. Stopping early can leave the drink sweet, cloudy and unstable, since fermentation may continue in the bottle.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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