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Drink

Root Beer

A fermented beverage made from water, hops, roots, oils, yeast, and molasses or sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Burdock 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 22 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Root Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brew

  1. Bruise the hops and roots.

  2. Boil the bruised ingredients in 1 gallon of water for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture while hot.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add the oils of spruce and sassafras when the mixture is cool enough to handle.

  2. Stir in the yeast and molasses or sugar.

  3. Cover the jar with a cloth and let it stand for 2 hours.

  4. Bottle the mixture and store it in a cool place.

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. Burdock + docktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together22 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Dock + dandeliontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Burdock + dandeliontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Burdock + molassestop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Dock + molassestop 31% 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
Ferments sugars into carbonation and a small amount of alcohol, giving the drink its fizz.
Molasses or white sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast consumes, fueling fermentation and adding sweetness.
Hops
Contributes bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the drink.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the liquid must be cool enough to handle before the yeast goes in. Adding it too hot can stop fermentation entirely.

“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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