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Ginger Pop

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Ginger Pop

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 Pop

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Break the ginger into fine pieces, but not into a powder.

  2. Add the ginger and lemon rind to the brown sugar in a large jar.

  3. Pour the boiling water over the mixture.

  4. Once the mixture is cold, add the hot yeast.

  5. Cover the jar and let it stand for 10 to 12 hours.

  6. Add the lemon juice and strain the mixture.

Bottle and ferment

  1. Bottle the ginger pop, corking tightly and tying the corks.

  2. Lay the bottles on their sides in a warm place.

  3. After 3 to 4 days, the ginger pop will be ready for use.

  4. Refrigerate the ginger pop.

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. Ginger + sugartop 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).

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

Ginger
Provides the spicy, aromatic flavour that defines the drink.
Brown sugar
Supplies sweetness and the sugar that the yeast ferments into fizz.
Hot yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing carbon dioxide that carbonates the drink.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bottling and corking tightly. Yeast keeps producing carbon dioxide after bottling. If the corks are not sealed tightly, the gas escapes and the pop stays flat, while a sealed bottle can build enough pressure to burst if fermentation runs too far.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, 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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