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Drink

Lemon Beer

A fermented beverage made with sugar, tartaric acid, lemon, ginger, yeast, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Lemon Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the lemon.

  2. In a large container, combine the sugar, tartaric acid, ginger root, and sliced lemon.

  3. Pour 2 gallons of boiling water over the ingredients and let it cool until warm.

Ferment

  1. Add the home-made yeast and stir gently.

  2. Cover and let it sit in a warm place for several hours.

  3. After fermentation, bottle and cork tightly.

  4. Allow to ferment for 2 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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  3. 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

Sugar
Feeds the yeast and provides the sweetness and alcohol produced during fermentation.
Home-made yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbonation and alcohol that give the drink its character.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Ginger root
Contributes aroma and a warm, spicy flavour to the drink.

The step that matters

Bottle and cork tightly after fermentation. Yeast keeps producing carbon dioxide while the drink ferments. If the bottles are not sealed well, pressure can build and bottles may burst, or the drink may lose its carbonation.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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