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Splendid Ginger Beer

A fermented ginger beverage made with water, ginger, sugar, cream of tartar, lemon essence, tartaric acid, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Splendid Ginger Beer

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 ↓

Splendid Ginger Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brew

  1. Boil the ginger root in 5 gallons of water.

  2. Add 4 pounds of sugar and ⅛ pound of cream of tartar to the mixture.

  3. Stir in 1 bottle of essence of lemon and 1 ounce of tartaric acid.

  4. Allow the mixture to cool, then add 1 quart of yeast.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Let it ferment for a few days before bottling.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + creamtop 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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. 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

Ginger root
Provides the characteristic spicy flavour and aroma of the beer.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, which turns it into carbon dioxide and alcohol to carbonate the drink.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing carbon dioxide for fizz and flavour compounds.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps balance sweetness and sharpness in the drink.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp, tart acidity that brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Allow the mixture to cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by hot liquid, so the mixture must cool to a warm temperature before the yeast is added; otherwise fermentation may fail.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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