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Drink

Ginger Beer

A fermented ginger and lemon beverage made with sugar, water, yeast, and optional ingredients.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ginger Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the sugar and water together.

  2. Beat the egg whites.

  3. Skim the mixture carefully.

  4. Add the ginger and shaved lemon rind.

  5. Boil for 30 minutes.

  6. Remove the white pith from the lemon.

  7. Add the pith to the mixture.

Ferment

  1. Let the mixture cool.

  2. Stir in the yeast.

  3. Pour the mixture into a barrel without straining.

  4. Seal the barrel.

Bottle

  1. After two weeks, draw off the beer.

  2. Bottle it.

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. 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. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

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

  5. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and the sugar that the yeast ferments into alcohol and carbonation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbon dioxide for fizz and alcohol for the beer.
Ginger
Adds the characteristic spicy, warm aroma and bite of ginger beer.
Lemon rind
Adds bright citrus aroma and a light acidity to the drink.
Egg white
Helps clarify the liquid by binding impurities that can be skimmed off.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by heat, so adding it to a hot liquid stops fermentation. The mixture should be cool before the yeast goes in so it can work.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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