Julia Altshuler wrote:

>
> I remember being a little girl when friends of my parents brought them
> an unusual gift of a fancy decorated pot with a pale substance in it.
> My parents never cooked with much in the way of spices so I wasn't
> familiar with it, but my father told me to smell it. I did, thought for
> a moment and then announced "gingerale!" The gift was dried ginger
> which I'd never seen before, but I recognized the smell of ginger.
>
> So here it is 35 years later, and I'm buying gingerale for Jim's cough,
> and I'm looking at the ingredients of the different brands: Schweppes,
> Canada Dry and Polar. I can't see that any of them have ginger in them.
> I taste the Canada Dry when I get home. It bears no resemblence to
> fresh ginger. So I think that maybe the name has nothing to do with the
> original product except that doesn't explain how I knew real dried
> ginger smelled like gingerale all those years ago.
>
> Now for the harder question. What if I wanted to make a ginger flavored
> soft drink at home? Has anyone tried this? Squeeze ginger into a
> seltzer or something?

How about trying ginger beer, the non -alcoholic variety. It has a lot more
ginger taste to it than ginger ale.