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Drink

Root Beer

Root beer is a fermented beverage made from water, hops, spruce, wintergreens, sassafras, hemlock, various roots, molasses, yeast, and optional ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Make the brew

  1. Boil the water with hops, spruce, wintergreens, sassafras, hemlock, and the various roots.

  2. Strain the mixture.

Ferment

  1. Add the molasses and yeast to the strained liquid.

  2. Stir in a little ginger if desired.

  3. Let the mixture ferment until it becomes bubbly.

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. Dandelion + docktop 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 + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Apple + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds sweetness and sugars that the yeast feeds on during fermentation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing carbon dioxide that makes the drink fizzy.
Hops
Contributes a bitter, aromatic flavour that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Let the mixture ferment until it becomes bubbly. Yeast converts sugars into carbon dioxide and alcohol. Bubbling shows the yeast is active and producing the fizz, so the cook should watch for it rather than rely on a fixed time.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hops, burdock, dandelion, dock, apple, molasses):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, burdock, dandelion, dock, apple, molasses. 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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