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Ginger Beer Powder

A powdered mixture of ginger, soda, sugar, lemon essence, and tartaric acid for making ginger beer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Powder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Carefully dry the soda, acid, and sugar separately at a temperature not exceeding 120°F (49°C).

Mix and bottle

  1. In a warm mortar, mix the dried powders together.

  2. Immediately transfer the mixture into dry bottles and cork securely.

  3. Include a measure holding 3 teaspoons with each bottle.

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. Ginger + sugartop 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).

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

Bicarbonate of soda
Reacts with the tartaric acid when wet to release carbon dioxide, making the drink fizz.
Tartaric acid
Provides the sharp acidity and reacts with the soda to produce the fizz.
Double-refined sugar
Adds sweetness and bulk to balance the sourness of the acid.
Jamaica ginger
Supplies the characteristic spicy flavour of the drink.

The step that matters

Dry the soda, acid, and sugar separately at low heat. Moisture in the powders would make the soda and acid react early, so the mixture would lose its fizz before it is used. Drying them separately at a low temperature keeps them dry and stable, and the mixture should be bottled immediately after mixing so it stays dry.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, 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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