Skip to main content
Drink

Old-time Root Beer

A fermented beverage made from birch bark, pine, wintergreen, fennel, spruce twigs, sugar, yeast, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pine and fennel share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Old-time Root Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the extract

  1. Combine black birch bark, Prince's pine, wintergreen, fennel, spruce twigs, and water in a large pot.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer until the flavors are extracted.

  3. Strain the mixture and dilute with water if the flavor is too strong.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add 1 pound of sugar for every gallon of the mixture while it is lukewarm.

  2. Stir in 1 cup of yeast and let it stand for 24 hours, stirring frequently.

  3. After 24 hours, bottle or pour into a small keg.

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. Pine + fenneltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together43 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Fennel + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together408 recipes

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

  3. Pine + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Black birch bark
Provides the characteristic wintergreen-like flavor base of the root beer.
Wintergreen leaves and stems
Contributes the sharp, minty aroma that defines the drink's flavor.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and provides sweetness and body to the finished drink.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbonation and a small amount of alcohol.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast while the mixture is lukewarm. Yeast is killed by excessive heat, so the mixture must be cooled to lukewarm before yeast is stirred in. Too hot and fermentation fails; too cold and it is slow to start.

Swap the fennel

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Fennelthe original
  4. Basilfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pine, 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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes