ISSUE 63, ALL THINGS GINGER, Part 2: Ginger Pop
Ginger Pop
Beverages were seasonal before the mid-twentieth century. One did not have iced tea all year round; only in the summer. Few beverages now have strictly seasonality—egg nog, bock beer, Beaujolais nouveau. The summer beverages of the 19th century were among the first to be mass produced and marketed. From 1820 on the most popular summer beverage among all ages and classes of American was lemonade. Prior to the popularization of iced tea in the 1870s, the second most popular summer drink was ginger pop. It was one of the beverages that defined the category of “soft drink”—non alcoholic, yet possessing a kick from ingredients other than alcohol that could provoke strong physical reactions—sugar, spice, caffeine. It belonged to that generation of beverages before the colas of the 1880s and 1890s, appearing alongside root beer, sarsaparilla, persimmon beer, and soda water.
Ginger Pop was an English invention, an offshoot of England’s fascination with ginger and its project of cultivating that fiery root in its colony of Jamaica. As a Lowell Massachusetts paper observed, “This popular British beverage is made as follows: One and half ounces of the best Jamaica ginger, one ounce of cream of tartar, one pound of sugar, and two sliced lemons: to all of which add four quarts of boiling water, and a half pint of yeas; let it ferment for 24 hours, strain, and bottle it. In a week or two it will be ready for use.” [Daily Citizen and News (July 5, 1870), 2].
As one can readily see, ginger pop incorporated into its fabric the lemon and sugar of lemonade. The great variable in ginger pop was the character of the ginger incorporated: Was it minced fresh ginger root? Ginger powder? Or one and one half ounces of Woodman’s Extract of Jamaican Ginger? Indeed ginger pop can be viewed as a synthesis of lemonade and rootbeer using ginger rather than sassafras as the root employed. The Cream of Tartar stabilized the acid balance of the drink. It was fizzy in the bottle and was famous for rushing up one’s nose in a fiery flood when first swallowed.
Notice that ginger pop was not carbonated water with ginger syrup added. That would become ginger ale. Soda water was a separate beverage path. Chemist Joseph Priestly in 1767 had discovered a method of carbonating water artificially while experimenting at a brewery in Leeds, England. Soda water approximated the effervescence of certain kinds of spring water from the spas. It was a matter of time before confectioners decided infusing soda water with fruit flavor syrups produced a more agreeable product the sulphurous fluid that often issued from the ground. In the United States the soda fountain became and urban institution shortly after the organization of the American Temperance Union in 1826. Soda water was seized as the alternative to “Satan’s Suds”—beer.
Avaunt! Whiskey, Brandy and Rum
Madeira, and even Champaigne—
The season of Soda and Sherbet is come,
And our fountains are flowing again:
For Soda or Nectar is better
By far than all Liquors combined;
And one drink will prove to a letter,
That there’s few but are of the same mind.
[Charleston Courier, June 9, 1832, 3].
Ginger Ale was served at fountains as a form of soda beverage. Ginger Pop was served in bottles, and sold chilled in the summer from ice buckets. Today it survives, but as a retro novelty. Ginger all may be had anywhere. Ginger pop . . . you’ve got to look.