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Drink

Ginger Beer

A fermented ginger beverage made with sugar, ginger, lemon juice, yeast, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquor

  1. Dissolve the sugar and bruised ginger in 2 gallons of boiling water for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and add the lemon juice.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Stir in the cream of tartar, yeast, and egg white, then mix well and let stand for 12 hours.

  2. Bottle and cork tightly.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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
Provides sweetness and food for the yeast to ferment into carbon dioxide.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbon dioxide that gives the drink its fizz.
Bruised ginger
Supplies the spicy, aromatic flavour that defines the drink.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and a bright, tangy edge that balances the sweetness.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that adds tang and helps the drink stay balanced during fermentation.
Egg white
Helps clarify the liquid by gathering fine particles as it stands.

The step that matters

Corking the bottles tightly. Fermentation gives off carbon dioxide that builds pressure in the sealed bottle. A tight cork keeps the fizz in and holds that pressure, and bottles that are sealed too early or too tightly can burst if pressure builds too far.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cream, 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.

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