Why does root beer smell like Deep Heat?

December 13, 2007 10:11 AM

Why does root beer smell like Deep Heat?

Being in Ireland, root beer isn't widely available to me, but the one time I tried it, the smell immediately reminded me of the popular topical pain relief spray, Deep Heat. It's a very distinctive, unusual smell, which leads me to believe that there must be some connection between the two, such as a shared ingredient. But what is it?

Nothing on the ingredients list of my Deep Heat can looks like it would be found in a beverage. And googling around, all I've found are references to the same phenomenon, but no explanations as to why it is. Which makes me even more intrigued. And so I turn to the great minds of AskMeFi for the answer.

posted by macdara to food & drink (15 comments total)

Um, I've never smelled Deep Heat, but my guess would be methyl salicylate (aka oil of wintergreen), or something like it.
posted by pullayup at 10:15 AM on December 13, 2007

I must smell these things differently than you do.
posted by caddis at 10:17 AM on December 13, 2007

Puyallup has the right of it, as, according to this article, wintergreen is a prominent ingredient in root beer.
posted by Lynsey at 10:29 AM on December 13, 2007

Wintergreen oil is in a lot of rootbeer as a flavoring, plus sassafrass root (the essential rootbeer flavor) has a distinctly wintergreen-esque aroma to all on its own. If you're ever in a place where it grows (the Southeastern US for example) you can actually dig up the roots in the woods. If you scrape the bark off, you get a strong, brisk scent. I imagine if that's the only place you've regularly encountered the aroma, that's what your brain associates with the smell.
posted by mostlymartha at 10:32 AM on December 13, 2007

I love root beer. And yep, it tastes just like Deep Heat or Germolene smells.

Pullayup nails it with Wintergreen, the magical shared ingredient connecting the stuff our footballers try not to rub near their groin to the brown stickysweet drink that tastes wonderful with a ball of vanilla ice cream dropped in it.
posted by brautigan at 10:35 AM on December 13, 2007

Ok, here's a little bit more:
At least according to this thread (I'm assuming that the folks who haunt the forum at RootBeerWorld.com know their root beer), root beer these days has a flavor profile resembling birch beer, which tastes overwhelmingly wintergreeny--birch twigs and bark were a commercial source for methyl salicylate/oil of wintergreen before synthetic stuff was available. You can still get Sioux City brand birch beer in some places in the States, and if you can find some where you are, it might provide an interesting comparison.
When you rub methyl salicylate on your skin, it makes the area warmer by opening up the capillaries, so it's often an ingredient in sports liniments/muscle rubs.
posted by pullayup at 10:40 AM on December 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

Huh, I came into this thread to suggest wintergreen.

It's hard to research the ingredients of root beer. It's not a branded beverage, and it doesn't have a single recipe. There are regional variations (it was brewed at home as tonic long before it was carbonated and sold as a snack) and brand variations. Root beers all have different recipes and can include literally hundreds of flavoring influences. But it's quite true that one of the very most common flavoring ingredients is oil of wintergreen. Other very common flavorings include molasses, cinnamon, sassafras, clove oil, birch bark, ginger, and anise.

I have used root beer in history education programs, brewing my own both from scratch based on reconstructed historic recipes and from commonly available root beer syrup.
posted by Miko at 10:49 AM on December 13, 2007

you can actually dig up the roots in the woods. If you scrape the bark off, you get a strong, brisk scent.

You don't need to be nearly so drastic as to dig up a tree. You can just pluck a leaf off the tree (you can recognize them, by the way, because the leaves have a distinct shape, usually with three large fat rounded fingers, although you'll see "mittens" and normal leaves also. Now pop the exposed stem of the leaf right into your mouth. You'll get the lovely sassafras flavor without damaging the tree (apart from the leaf, I guess).
posted by Deathalicious at 11:25 AM on December 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yup, wintergreen tastes exactly like Deep Heat/BenGay smells. In my experience, many North Americans have a weird mental short circuit, preventing them from making a connection between the two. Until you point it out to them while they're drinking root beer.
posted by zamboni at 11:39 AM on December 13, 2007

That's my mystery solved! Thanks muchly to everyone -- I didn't expect such a response.
posted by macdara at 12:20 PM on December 13, 2007

There are certain flavors which are the result of a careful merger of other flavors, yet do not taste at all like their components.

"Cola" is a mixture of vanilla, citrus, and cinnamon. (The difference between Coke and Pepsi is that one of them relies more on lemon for their citrus and the other more on orange.) The flavor has nothing to do with cola beans.

"Root Beer" is a mixture of wintergreen and vanilla. When the mixture is right, it doesn't tase like either of them. But different people taste things differently, and if you concentrate you can make out the wintergreen in rootbeer. And it's easier to pick out the components in a two-flavor mixture like this than in a three-flavor mixture.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 12:40 PM on December 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

you can still get Sioux City brand birch beer in some places in the States

And even better...Sioux City sarsaparilla, "the Granddaddy of all Root Beers"!
posted by JaredSeth at 1:07 PM on December 13, 2007

mmmm do you have anymore of that good sarsaparilla?
posted by mce at 2:25 PM on December 13, 2007

But different people taste things differently, and if you concentrate you can make out the wintergreen in rootbeer.

In my case, it was the smell of the root beer that I had (may have been A&W, I can't remember) that surprised me, because it was so strong for a soda, and because of my previous familiarity with Deep Heat. But to me it didn't taste anything at all like its smell.

So it was more of a situation of smell = 'ugh' but taste = 'yum'.
posted by macdara at 3:22 PM on December 13, 2007

Ha! I have a candle on my desk that is wintergreen/sage. My students think that it either smells like IcyHot or Root Beer. Now I know why. Either way I am not lighting the thing. It is too smelly.
posted by nimsey lou at 6:10 PM on December 13, 2007