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Drink

Root Beer

Root beer is a fermented beverage made from dandelion root, yellow dock root, sassafras root, wintergreen or birch bark, prince’s pine, yeast cake, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Dandelion and dock share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Root Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brew

  1. Combine dandelion, yellow dock, sassafras, wintergreen or birch bark, and prince's pine in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture briefly to extract the flavors, then strain and cool.

Ferment and bottle

  1. When lukewarm, add Fleischmann's Yeast Cake and sweeten with molasses.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours, skimming frequently.

  3. Bottle tightly and let it ferment for 8 to 10 days before drinking.

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. Dandelion + docktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Dock + pinetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Dandelion + pinetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Dock + molassestop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Dandelion + molassestop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast cake
Feeds the carbon dioxide production that carbonates the drink during fermentation.
Molasses
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments, and adds depth and color to the flavor.
Dandelion root
Contributes the bitter, earthy base flavor of the brew.
Sassafras root
Supplies the characteristic aroma and flavor of traditional root beer.

The step that matters

Bottle tightly and let it ferment. Yeast produces carbon dioxide during fermentation, and a sealed bottle traps it to carbonate the drink. Loosely closed bottles can lose carbonation, while sealed bottles under pressure can burst if fermentation runs too long.

“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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