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Drink

Ginger Pop

A fermented ginger drink made with sugar, lemon, ginger, water, yeast, and optionally egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Ginger Pop

Why it works: Lemon and ginger 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 Pop

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve the sugar in 2 gallons of boiling water.

  2. Add the juice and peel of the lemons and the bruised ginger.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add the yeast on a piece of toast.

  2. Allow it to stand for 12 hours.

  3. Strain through a coarse cloth and bottle, tying the corks down.

  4. For a quicker use, add the beaten egg white just before corking.

  5. Let it ferment for 3 days.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Lump sugar
Provides the sugar that the yeast feeds on to produce fizz and alcohol.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbon dioxide that carbonates the drink.
Ginger
Adds its sharp, spicy aroma and flavour to the beer.
Lemons
Add acidity and citrus aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Boiling-hot liquid would kill yeast cells, so the mixture must be cool enough that the yeast stays alive and can start fermenting.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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