Skip to main content
Drink

Ginger Beer

A fermented beverage made from sugar, water, ginger, lemon essence, acetic acid, and capsicum tincture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Ginger Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Pour the essence of lemon and ginger over the sugar and water.

  2. Add the acetic acid and dissolve the mixture.

  3. Let it stand for one day.

Bottle

  1. Add one ounce of the mixture to 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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + capsicumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Lemon + capsicumtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. 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
Sweetens the drink and adds body to the liquid.
Water
Dissolves the sugar and makes up the bulk of the liquid.
Acetic acid
Adds sharp sourness to the drink.
Essence of lemon
Adds bright citrus aroma and flavour.
Ginger
Adds spicy aroma and warmth.

The step that matters

Dissolve the acetic acid fully. Acetic acid is strongly sour, so if it is not completely dissolved before the mixture stands, the drink can taste uneven, with pockets of sharpness in some bottles.

Swap the capsicum

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Broccolifits about as well
  4. Capsicumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, 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.

More ginger beer recipes

Powder 9American 4Lemon 4English 3Molasses 3 See all 226 →

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesGinger PopGinger Pop22 recipesGinger WineGinger Wine12 recipes