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Drink

Spruce Beer

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Spruce Beer

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 ↓

Spruce Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the water.

  2. Add the ginger, lemon peel, and essence of spruce for flavor.

  3. Stir in the yeast.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Allow the mixture to ferment.

  2. Once fermented, bottle it up tightly.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and the food that yeast converts into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Yeast
Drives fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide that gives the beer its fizz.
Ginger
Adds a sharp, warm spiced aroma and flavor.
Lemon peel
Adds bright citrus aroma and a touch of tartness.
Essence of spruce
Adds a resinous, piney aroma that defines the drink's flavor.

The step that matters

Bottle it up tightly once fermented. Yeast keeps producing carbon dioxide, and sealed bottles trap it, which carbonates the drink. If fermentation is still active, pressure can build inside the bottles and cause them to burst.

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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