Skip to main content
Drink

English White Wine

A homemade white wine made with sugar, water, raisins, ale, brandy, sugar candy, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,768 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

English White Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar in water for 20 minutes, skimming off the scum.

  2. Transfer to a tub and let it cool.

Ferment

  1. Once nearly cold, add chopped raisins.

  2. When completely cool, add strong ale.

  3. Let it stand for 3 days, stirring daily.

  4. Transfer to a cask with brandy, sugar candy, and isinglass.

  5. Bottle after 8 to 12 months.

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. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. 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

Sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and sweetness in the finished wine.
Malaga raisins
Add fermentable sugars, flavour and body to the wine.
Strong ale
Adds yeast to start the fermentation.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and helps keep the wine stable.
Isinglass
Clears the wine by collecting suspended particles as it settles.

The step that matters

Add the strong ale only when the liquid is completely cool. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding the ale to hot liquid can stop fermentation before it starts. Cooling first keeps the yeast alive to convert sugar into alcohol.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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.

You might also like

Raisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes