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Receipts for Ginger Beer

A fermented ginger beverage made with water, sugar, ginger, lemon, eggs, yeast, and clarified with isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Receipts for Ginger Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 10 gallons of water with 12.5 pounds of lump sugar and 0.75 pounds of broken ginger for 20 minutes, skimming regularly.

  2. Pour the mixture into a tub to cool.

  3. Add the thin rind of 12 lemons to the tub.

Prepare the lemons

  1. Remove the white part from the 12 lemons.

  2. Slice the lemon pieces.

  3. Place the sliced lemons in a barrel.

Ferment and clear

  1. Once the beer is cold, pour it over the sliced lemons.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of yeast.

  3. Let the barrel stand in a cool place until fermentation is complete.

  4. Add a little isinglass to clear the beer.

  5. Seal the barrel.

  6. Wait a few days until ready for bottling.

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).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Lump sugar
Provides sweetness and the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbonation and the beer's alcohol.
Lemons
Add acidity and citrus aroma to the beer.
Ginger
Adds its spicy, aromatic flavour to the beer.
Whites of eggs
Used in the clearing process to help settle particles out of the beer.

The step that matters

Let the barrel stand in a cool place until fermentation is complete. Fermentation must finish before clearing and bottling; if the beer is still active when sealed in bottles, pressure can build up and bottles may burst.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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