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Drink

Root Beer

Root beer is a fermented beverage made from bran, hops, twigs, sassafras, roots, ginger, molasses, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 bran, hops, twigs, sassafras, and roots in water.

  2. Strain the mixture.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add ginger and molasses to the strained liquid.

  2. Mix in the yeast.

  3. Let it ferment for a few days before bottling.

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Ginger + molassestop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 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

Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the molasses.
Molasses
Provides sweetness and food for the yeast, and adds depth of flavor.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing carbon dioxide that carbonates the drink.
Ginger
Adds spicy aroma and a sharp, warming flavor.

The step that matters

Fermenting before bottling. Yeast needs time to convert sugars into carbon dioxide. Bottling too early can leave the drink flat, while bottling after fermentation has run long enough can build pressure that bursts bottles.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hops, burdock, dock, dandelion, molasses):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Nutmegfits less well

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