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Drink

Ginger Beer

A fermented ginger beverage made with water, ginger, lemon, sugar, and barm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. Pour the boiling water over all ingredients except the barm in a large pan.

Add the barm

  1. When the mixture is half warm, take a little in a basin and add the barm.

  2. Once the barm is well risen, gently pour it into the pan with the rest of the mixture.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Let it stand overnight.

  2. Strain through muslin, then bottle and cork well.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Cream + gingertop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Barm
Yeast culture that ferments the sugar, producing carbon dioxide for fizz and alcohol.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, and provides the sweetness that balances the ginger and lemon.
Ginger root
Supplies the spicy, aromatic flavour that defines the drink.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity, giving the drink a tart edge and helping keep the flavour bright.
Lemons
Add acidity and citrus aroma to the drink.

The step that matters

Adding the barm to the warm mixture. Yeast works best in lukewarm liquid. If the mixture is too hot it can kill the yeast, and if it is cold fermentation will be slow. Testing the warm liquid first and waiting until the barm is well risen shows the culture is active before it is added to the whole batch.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Orangefits about as well

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