Name: Shandy Gaff
Ingredients: 2 pints ale; 3 bottles ginger beer; broken ice (optional)

Why it works: Ginger and beer work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 210 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Shandy Gaff

Ingredients

2 pints ale
3 bottles ginger beer
broken ice (optional)

Directions

Pour the ale into a large glass jug.
Add the ginger beer and stir gently.
If available, add a few pieces of broken ice.

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.

Ginger + beertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together210 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ale: Provides the base body and malty, bitter flavour that the drink is built on.
Ginger beer: Adds sweetness, spice and fizz that lighten the drink and balance the ale.

“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.