Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Ginger Beer
Ingredients
Directions
Dissolve the sugar in the water.
Add the pounded ginger root and tartaric acid.
Mix well and let it ferment.
Bottle and store in a cool place.
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.
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Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Sugar
- Feeds the fermentation and provides sweetness in the finished drink.
- Ginger root
- Supplies the characteristic spicy aroma and flavor of the drink.
- Tartaric acid
- Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavor.
The step that matters
Let it ferment before bottling. Fermentation by yeast converts sugar into carbon dioxide and alcohol. Bottling too early can leave sugar unfermented, so the bottles may not carbonate properly.
“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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