Skip to main content
Drink

Shandy Gaff

A chilled ale and ginger beer cocktail with liqueur or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and beer work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 210 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Shandy Gaff

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put some lumps of ice in a jug.

  2. Pour the ale over the ice.

  3. Add the liqueur or brandy.

  4. Lastly, pour in the ginger beer and give it a stir.

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 + beertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Beer + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Ginger + brandytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Good ale
Provides the base beer flavour and body that the other ingredients are mixed into.
Ginger beer
Adds sweetness and spicy ginger aroma, lightening the drink's overall flavour.
Liqueur or brandy
Adds alcohol strength and extra aroma to the blend.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beer, brandy):

  1. Clovefits about as well
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beer, brandy. 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.

You might also like

Ginger BeerGinger Beer11 recipesSpruce BeerSpruce Beer58 recipesGinger PopGinger Pop22 recipesGinger WineGinger Wine12 recipes