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Drink

Ginger Beer

A fermented ginger beverage made by steeping ginger, sugar, and tartar, then adding yeast and letting it rise overnight.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Infuse the bruised ginger in boiling water.

  2. Add the brown sugar and cream of tartar.

  3. When lukewarm, strain the mixture.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add the yeast.

  2. Let it stand overnight, then bottle it.

Fine (optional)

  1. If desired, add the lemon and egg white to fine it.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and the sugars the yeast ferments.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity and tartness that balances the sweetness.
Bruised ginger root
Supplies the main spicy, aromatic flavour of the drink.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing carbonation and a little alcohol.
Egg white
Helps clear the drink by binding cloudy particles as it settles.

The step that matters

Strain when lukewarm, before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes in. Adding yeast too early can stop fermentation, leaving the ginger beer flat and sweet.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, ginger, egg):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Raisinfits about as well

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