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Drink

Root Beer

A fermented beverage made from hops, roots, and molasses or sugar, flavored with spruce and sassafras oils.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Burdock and dock 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

Prepare the brew

  1. Bruise the hops and roots.

  2. Boil them in 1 gallon of water for about 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture while hot.

Flavour and ferment

  1. Add the oils of spruce and sassafras when the mixture is cool enough to touch.

  2. Stir in the yeast and molasses or sugar for sweetness.

  3. Cover the jar with a cloth and let it sit for about 2 hours to ferment.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the root beer and store it in a cool place.

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. Burdock + docktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together22 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Dock + dandeliontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Burdock + dandeliontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing carbonation and the drink's fizz.
Molasses or white sugar
Provides sweetness and the food source that yeast ferments.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the oils when the mixture is cool enough to touch. Volatile aromatic oils of spruce and sassafras can evaporate or dull when added to very hot liquid, so waiting until it has cooled keeps the flavour fresh and strong.

“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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