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Root Beer

Root beer brewed from dock roots, burdock, sarsaparilla, hops, spruce twigs, molasses, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Dock and burdock share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Root Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brew

  1. Boil yellow dock roots, burdock, sarsaparilla, hops, and spruce twigs in 3 gallons of water.

  2. Strain the mixture and add 6 more gallons of water.

  3. Stir in 1 gallon of molasses and 1 pint of yeast.

Ferment and serve

  1. Fill the cask and leave the bung out for the foam to overflow.

  2. Once fermentation stops, seal the cask tightly.

  3. Serve chilled, especially in summer.

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. Dock + burdocktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together22 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Burdock + molassestop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Dock + molassestop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Hops + molassestop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5 recipes
  5. Burdock + hopstop 62% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides sugar that feeds the yeast and adds dark sweetness and flavor.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing carbonation and alcohol in the brew.
Hops
Adds bitterness that balances the sweetness and aids flavor and preservation.
Sarsaparilla
Contributes the characteristic root flavor of the drink.
Spruce twigs
Adds resinous, aromatic flavor to the brew.

The step that matters

Leaving the bung out during fermentation. Active yeast releases carbon dioxide and foam that can build pressure or overflow. Leaving the bung out lets gas escape while fermentation runs, and sealing only after fermentation stops keeps the cask from bursting while still trapping carbonation.

Swap the dock

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (burdock, hops, molasses):

  1. Gingerfits better
  2. Dockthe original
  3. Cinnamonfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against burdock, hops, molasses. 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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