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Ginger Beer

A fermented beverage made with ginger, sugar, citrus, raisins, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Ginger Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the lemons and oranges, then extract their juice.

  2. Boil the water, ginger, and sugar for 30 minutes.

  3. Pour the boiling mixture over the fruit peels and add the juice.

Ferment

  1. When nearly cool, add a little yeast spread on a piece of toast.

  2. Let it stand for 3 days, stirring twice daily.

  3. Transfer to a cask with the raisins and isinglass.

  4. Continue stirring twice daily for 10 days until fermentation stops.

Mature

  1. Allow to mature for 3 months 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Orange + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw sugar
Provides sweetness and the fuel that yeast turns into carbonation and alcohol.
Ginger
Supplies the main spicy flavour and aroma of the beer.
Yeast
Drives fermentation, producing carbon dioxide for fizz and alcohol.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright citrus flavour from juice and peel.
Seville oranges
Add acidity and bitter citrus aroma from juice and peel.
Isinglass
Acts as a fining agent that helps clear the beer by gathering suspended yeast.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast when nearly cool. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must have cooled close to room temperature before the yeast goes in. Adding it too early can stop fermentation before it starts.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, orange, ginger. 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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