Skip to main content
Drink

Ginger Ale

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Ale

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar, water, and ginger for about 30 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

Add flavorings and yeast

  1. Add finely chopped pineapple and lemons.

  2. Dissolve cream of tartar and yeast cakes in water, then add to the mixture.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain the mixture the next day, then bottle and cork.

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 + pineappletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together559 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and provides the drink's sweetness.
Ground ginger
Gives the drink its spicy aroma and characteristic bite.
Yeast cakes
Ferment the sugars, producing carbon dioxide that carbonates the drink.
Cream of tartar
Adds mild acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright citrus aroma.
Pineapple
Adds fruity flavor and some natural sweetness.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid. Cooling the boiled syrup to lukewarm lets the yeast stay active so it can ferment the sugars and carbonate the drink.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

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

More ginger ale recipes

Punch 11Salad 4Frappe 3Fruit Salad 3Julep 3 See all 3 →

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesGinger PopGinger Pop22 recipesPineapple LemonadePineapple Lemonade18 recipes