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American Ginger-beer

A fermented ginger beverage made with sugar, honey, lemon juice, ginger, water, egg white, and lemon essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

American Ginger-beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ginger liquid

  1. Boil the ginger in 3 quarts of water for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the sugar, lemon juice, honey, and the remaining water.

  3. Strain the mixture through a cloth.

Finish and bottle

  1. When cold, add the egg white and essence of lemon.

  2. Let it stand for 4 days, then bottle it.

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. Honey + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Lemon + honeytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,707 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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

White sugar
Provides sweetness and food for the yeast that carbonates the drink.
Bruised ginger
Supplies the characteristic spicy flavour and aroma of the beer.
Honey
Adds sweetness and a rounded flavour while contributing to fermentation.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Egg white
Helps clarify the drink by binding fine particles as it settles.

The step that matters

Adding the egg white and essence when cold. Adding them while the liquid is still hot could cook the egg white and disturb clarification, and heat can dull the delicate lemon aroma of the essence. Cooling first keeps the drink clear and the flavour fresh.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Dillfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, honey, 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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