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Root Beer

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cherry and ginger work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 293 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Root Beer

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the sassafras root, burdock root, wild cherry bark, root of black alder, and spice wood in water for several hours.

  2. Strain the mixture and sweeten it with molasses or sugar.

  3. When the mixture is blood-warm, add sufficient yeast to ferment it.

  4. Allow it to ferment until ready to drink.

  5. Optionally, add a little ginger and hops for flavor.

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. Cherry + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Burdock + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Ginger + hopstop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the burdock

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cherry, molasses, ginger, hops):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Burdockthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cherry, molasses, ginger, hops. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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