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Another Wat to Make Ginger Wine

A fermented beverage made from water, brown sugar, ginger, whisky, lemon and orange rinds, and clarified with isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Another Wat to Make Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the water and brown sugar together, stirring frequently and skimming off any foam.

  2. Boil the ginger separately in a small amount of water, then strain it.

  3. Steep the rinds of the lemons and oranges in the whisky overnight.

Combine and age

  1. Once the boiled mixture is cool, combine it with the whisky and the ginger in a cask.

  2. Add 2 drops of isinglass to the mixture.

  3. After 6 weeks, the ginger wine can be bottled.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Ginger + whiskytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + bitter orangetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Provides the sweetness and body of the wine and feeds the fermentation.
Ginger
Adds the spicy aroma and warm flavour that defines the wine.
Whisky
Adds alcohol, which preserves the wine and carries the aroma of the rinds.
Lemons
Add acidity and citrus brightness to balance the sweetness.
Bitter oranges
Add aromatic oils and bitterness from their rinds and juice.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiling sugar syrup. Foam rising during the boil carries impurities and wild yeast debris that can cloud the wine or spoil its flavour, so it should be skimmed off as it forms.

Swap the bitter orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, ginger, whisky, lemon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Bitter orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, whisky, lemon. 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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