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Ginger Syrup

A syrup made by boiling ginger and fruit with sugar, brandy, and lemon, then steeping and reducing.

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 Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ginger water

  1. Boil the ginger pieces in a large quantity of water until the water tastes strongly of ginger.

  2. Add the solid fruit to the ginger water and boil until nearly tender.

  3. Transfer the fruit to a jar with the ginger water and let it sit for 4 to 5 days, stirring constantly.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine the sugar, brandy, lemon peel, lemon juice, and a little ginger water in a pot.

  2. Boil the syrup, removing any scum.

  3. Add the fruit to the syrup and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove the syrup from heat and let it sit for a week.

  5. Drain the syrup and boil it again with additional sugar until rich.

  6. Add the fruit back to the syrup and boil for another 10 to 15 minutes.

  7. Transfer the syrup to pots and cover with brandy 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. 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

White ginger
Releases its flavour into the water, giving the syrup its strong ginger taste.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the syrup and thickens it as it boils down to a rich consistency.
Brandy
Adds aroma and acts as a preservative in the finished syrup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup, removing any scum. Scum is impurities that rise as sugar syrup heats. Skimming it off keeps the syrup clear and clean-tasting. Watching the boil also prevents the sugar from scorching as it reduces.

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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