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Ginger-Beer Powders

A powdered mix of lemon essence, sugar, soda, ginger, and tartaric acid used to make ginger beer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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-Beer Powders

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the powders

  1. Mix the essence of lemon, icing sugar, carbonate of soda, and ground ginger thoroughly.

  2. Store the mixture in colored paper.

  3. Keep the tartaric acid in white paper.

Make the ginger beer

  1. To make ginger beer, dissolve the contents of the colored paper in a tumbler, then add the tartaric acid from the white paper.

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. 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. Lemon + sugartop 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

Icing or castor sugar
Adds sweetness and bulk to the powder.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acid to release carbon dioxide, creating the fizz.
Tartaric acid
Reacts with the carbonate to release gas and adds a sharp, sour taste.
Finely ground ginger
Adds spicy aroma and the characteristic ginger flavour.

The step that matters

Keep the acid and carbonate apart until dissolving. Tartaric acid and carbonate of soda react when moistened, releasing carbon dioxide gas that makes the drink fizz. Keeping them separate and dry until the drink is made stops the reaction early, so the powders keep their fizz for when they are needed.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger. 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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