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Ginger Pop

A fermented ginger beverage made with water, ginger, sugar, lemon, brandy, yeast, and clarified with isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Ginger Pop

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 Pop

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the water and ginger together for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the clarified sugar and boil for a few more minutes.

  3. Skim off the scum.

Cool and ferment

  1. Cool the mixture until it is warm like new milk.

  2. Add the lemon rinds and juice, melted isinglass, brandy, and yeast.

  3. Cork the mixture.

  4. Seal the container.

  5. Let it ferment.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + sugartop 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. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Ginger + brandytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Ginger and sugar 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 the sweetness and the food that yeast converts into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide that give the drink its fizz.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma, balancing the sweetness of the sugar.
Ginger
Adds the spicy flavour that defines ginger beer.
Isinglass
Clears the drink by settling out suspended particles as it ferments.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture to warm, like new milk, before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid. If the mixture is still hot when the yeast and other ingredients go in, fermentation may fail, so the cook should wait until it is only warm.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Apricotfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, sugar, brandy. 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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