Name: Syrup Op Ginger
Ingredients: 4 teaspoons ginger root; 8 ounces boiling water; sugar to taste

Why it works: Ginger and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Syrup Op Ginger

Ingredients

4 teaspoons ginger root
8 ounces boiling water
sugar to taste

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Combine ginger root and boiling water in a bowl.
Let steep for 10 minutes.
Strain the mixture and add sugar until dissolved, creating a syrup.

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.

Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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 root: Provides the main flavor and aroma, which infuse into the hot water as it steeps.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and, once dissolved, gives the liquid a syrupy body.

“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.