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Drink

Ginger Beer

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

  1. Rub the lemon on the sugar.

  2. Bruise the ginger and place all ingredients in a large pan.

  3. Pour boiling water over the mixture and let it cool until warm.

Ferment

  1. Toast a piece of bread and add 1 tablespoon of yeast to the mixture.

  2. Let it stand for 12 hours.

  3. Add the beaten egg whites.

Bottle and rest

  1. Bottle the mixture.

  2. Let it rest for 3 days until ready to use.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbon dioxide that carbonates the drink.
Ginger
Adds its sharp, aromatic flavour to the drink.
Lump sugar
Provides the sugar that the yeast feeds on during fermentation.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity, giving the drink a tangy edge.
Lemon
Adds acidity and citrus aroma to the drink.

The step that matters

Bottle the mixture after it has stood. Fermentation keeps producing carbon dioxide, so sealed bottles can build pressure and burst if the brew is bottled before fermentation has settled. Bottle only once the mixture has fermented as directed, and store bottles carefully.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, lemon, bread, 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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