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Drink

Ginger Beer

A fermented ginger beverage made with boiling water, sugar, ginger, lemon rind, lemon juice, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the brew

  1. Pour 10 quarts of boiling water over 3 pounds of white sugar, 3 ounces of bruised ginger, 3 ounces of cream of tartar, and the thin rind of 6 lemons.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Once cool, add the juice of the 6 lemons and 6 teaspoons of brewer's yeast or 2 cakes of Royal Yeast.

  4. Let the mixture stand for 2 days.

Bottle

  1. Bottle and cork the ginger beer.

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. Ginger + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Brewer's yeast or royal yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbonation and the drink's fizz.
White sugar
Provides the fuel for fermentation and the drink's sweetness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Bruised ginger
Releases its aromatic oils and pungent flavour into the hot water.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps keep the brew tart and stable during fermentation.

The step that matters

Bottle and cork the ginger beer. Fermentation keeps producing carbon dioxide after bottling. Bottles corked too loosely can lose their fizz, while tightly sealed bottles can build enough pressure to burst, so the stand time before bottling matters.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, ginger, cream):

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

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