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Drink

Ginger Beer

A fermented ginger beverage made with water, ginger, sugar, lime, and optional sweet toddy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,621 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the water and mix in the ginger, cream of tartar, and sugar-candy.

  2. Add the juice of the lime and stir until dissolved.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then strain it into a large bowl.

Bottle and ferment

  1. Add 5 pints of pure water and the sweet toddy if using.

  2. Bottle the mixture in soda-water bottles, tying the corks tightly.

  3. Allow to ferment for 2 days before consuming.

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 + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,621 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 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 + limetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,332 recipes

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

  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
Adds the spicy, aromatic flavour that defines the drink.
Sugar-candy
Provides sweetness and the sugar that yeast ferments into carbonation.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity, giving the drink a tangy, sharp taste.
Lime
Contributes acidity and citrus aroma to the flavour.

The step that matters

Tying the corks tightly. Fermentation produces carbon dioxide inside the sealed bottles. A loose cork lets the gas escape, so the drink goes flat, and tight sealing lets pressure build for fizz.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Limethe original

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