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Drink

Elderberry Wine

A fermented beverage made by mashing elderberries, adding sugar, water, and brandy, then boiling and aging.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Elderberry Wine

Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Elderberry Wine

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Mash the elderberries in a stone jar with a round stick.

  2. Set the jar in a warm oven or a kettle of boiling water until the berries simmer.

  3. Press and strain the juice through a sieve.

Make the wine

  1. In a large kettle, combine the sugar with the elderberry juice and stir until dissolved.

  2. Add the cold water.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Skim off any scum that rises, and continue until no more scum appears.

  5. Add 1.5 pints of brandy for every 16 quarts of liquid.

Keg

  1. Transfer the mixture into a keg.

  2. Loosely place the bung.

  3. Leave the keg for 4-5 days.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Elderberries
Provide the main flavor, color and natural pectin-free fruit body of the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness and body to the finished wine.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content, helping preserve the wine and stop fermentation.

“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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