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Drink

To Make Ginger Beer

A fermented ginger beverage made with ginger, cream of tartar, sugar, water, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

To Make Ginger Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine ginger, cream of tartar, and sugar in an earthen vessel.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture and let it cool.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Once cool, add the yeast and stir gently.

  2. Cover and let it stand overnight.

  3. The next morning, skim off any foam and bottle the ginger beer.

  4. Store in a cool place for three days before using.

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

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

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

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

  3. Ginger + creamtop 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

Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbonation and the drink's fizz.
White sugar
Feeds the yeast and provides sweetness in the finished drink.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that gives the ginger beer a tangy flavour.
Ginger
Provides the main spicy, aromatic flavour of the drink.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed or weakened by very hot liquid, so the boiling water must cool before the yeast goes in. Adding it too early can stop fermentation from starting.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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