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Powers, Ginger Beer

A homemade ginger beer made with sugar, baking soda, ginger powder, lemon essence, and tartaric or citric acid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Powers, Ginger Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the white sugar, bicarbonate of soda, Jamaican ginger, and essence of lemon.

  2. Wrap this mixture in blue paper.

  3. Wrap the tartaric or citric acid in white paper.

Make and serve

  1. To use, dissolve each powder in about ½ cup of water.

  2. Mix the two solutions and drink while effervescing.

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Bicarbonate of soda
Reacts with the acid to release carbon dioxide, creating the fizz.
Tartaric acid or citric acid
Reacts with the bicarbonate to release carbon dioxide and gives the drink its sharp acidity.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the acidity.
Jamaica ginger
Provides the characteristic spicy ginger aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Keep the two powders separate until use. Bicarbonate and acid react as soon as they meet in water, releasing carbon dioxide. If they are mixed dry or dissolved too early, the fizz is lost before drinking, so each powder must be dissolved separately and the two solutions combined just before serving.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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