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Drink

Ginger Beer

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Ginger Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Break the ginger root into small pieces.

  2. Place the ginger pieces in a large bowl or crock.

  3. Add the sugar, cream of tartar, and lemon juice and rind.

  4. Pour the boiling water over the mixture.

  5. Let it cool to lukewarm.

  6. Add the yeast.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Let it stand for 6 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Transfer the strained liquid to self-sealing bottles.

  4. Store in a cool place.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Ginger + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

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

Ginger and sugar 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
Ferments the sugar, producing carbonation and the drink's fizz.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and provides the drink's sweetness.
Ginger root
Supplies the characteristic spicy, aromatic flavor.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that gives the drink a tangy, tart edge.
Lemon
Adds brightness and acidity, along with aromatic oils from the rind.

The step that matters

Let it cool to lukewarm before adding the yeast. Boiling water kills yeast. Cooling the mixture to lukewarm lets the yeast survive and start fermenting the sugar, which is what makes the drink fizzy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Orangefits about as well

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