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Ginger Beer for Summer

A fermented ginger drink made with boiling water, sugar, ginger root, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Ginger Beer for Summer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a large pot, combine boiling water, loaf sugar, bruised ginger-root, and cream of tartar or sliced lemon.

  2. Stir until the sugar is dissolved and let it cool to milk warm.

Ferment

  1. Add hop yeast poured over the slice of cold bread, allowing it to float on the surface.

  2. Cover and let it stand for 24 hours.

Bottle and serve

  1. Strain the mixture and fill clean bottles three-fourths full.

  2. Cork the bottles securely and tie them over.

  3. Let it ferment for 2 days before consuming.

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

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

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

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

  3. Ginger + breadtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cream + breadtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Ginger + creamtop 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

Loaf sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast consumes to produce carbonation and alcohol.
Hop yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbon dioxide that carbonates the drink.
Bruised ginger-root
Supplies the ginger flavour and aroma.
Cream of tartar or lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps the sugar stay balanced.

The step that matters

Cork the bottles securely and tie them over. Fermentation releases carbon dioxide into a sealed bottle. If the cork or tie is weak, pressure can push it out or the bottle can burst, so the closure must hold.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, bread. 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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