Gingerol
Also written gingerols, 6-gingerol, shogaol, shogaols, 6-shogaol, zingerone
Quick answer
The pungent compound of fresh ginger, and the reason dried ginger is not simply fresh ginger with the water removed: drying converts it into a different, sharper compound.
What it does
Gingerol gives fresh ginger a bright, immediate, slightly sweet heat felt at the front of the mouth and in the throat. On drying it loses water to form shogaol, which is markedly more pungent and harsher, with the heat sitting further back; prolonged cooking additionally produces zingerone, which is much milder and frankly sweet. So a single rhizome yields three distinct pungency characters depending on what has been done to it, and the sensory difference between fresh, dried and long-cooked ginger is a chemical conversion rather than a matter of concentration.
How it behaves when cooked
Four properties of the molecule, and what they mean at the stove.
- Volatility
- low
- Fat solubility
- high
- Water solubility
- moderate
- Heat stability
- moderate
This is the clearest case in the dataset of a compound that changes identity during cooking, and it settles the substitution question that follows. Dried ground ginger is not a stand-in for fresh in a dish where fresh ginger is the aromatic lift, because the conversion to shogaol has already happened and the bright top note is gone; equally, fresh ginger will not give a gingerbread the penetrating dry heat it is built around. Long, wet cooking pushes the balance towards the mildest of the three compounds, which is why a ginger braise tastes sweet and warming rather than sharp, and why ginger intended to bite is added late. The aroma of ginger, as distinct from its heat, comes from a separate volatile terpene fraction that does evaporate — so a long-cooked ginger dish loses its smell while keeping its warmth.
Spices that carry it
Recorded on the compound rather than on each spice, so the two cannot disagree.
- GingerPrincipal component
Not to be confused with
Compounds a reader is likely to take for this one, and why they differ.
Paradol
The pungent compound of grains of paradise, a close relative of gingerol rather than gingerol itself. The distinction was made because the grains-of-paradise profile records "paradol and gingerol relatives" and claiming gingerol proper would have been a small unearned upgrade of its own record.
Piperine
Grains of paradise and ginger are sometimes described as peppery. They are Zingiberaceae, contain no piperine, and their pungency is of a different chemical family entirely.
Questions this page answers
- what is gingerol
- what does gingerol do
- what is gingerols
- what is 6-gingerol