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Drink

Various Wines

A fermented beverage made from clarified cider, brandy, tartar, wine, milk, fruit, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and brandy work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Various Wines

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wine

  1. Mix the clarified cider, brandy, crude tartar, and any wine in a large container.

  2. Add the sweet milk to the mixture and stir thoroughly.

  3. Let the mixture sit for 24 to 36 hours to settle.

  4. For blackberry or strawberry wine, add 4 to 6 quarts of bruised and strained fresh fruit for every 10 gallons of wine and let it stand until the flavor is extracted.

Bottle and age

  1. When bottling, add 3 or 4 broken raisins to each bottle for added richness and flavor.

  2. Store the wine for at least a year to allow it to mellow.

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. Cider + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Cider + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

  5. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

Clarified cider
Forms the base of the wine, providing most of the liquid and fermentable sugar.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and adds warmth to the finished wine.
Crude tartar
Adds acidity and helps give the wine a crisp, balanced tang.
Sweet milk
Helps settle and clarify the mixture as it sits.
Fresh fruit
Adds fruit flavor and aroma when left to steep in the wine.
Raisins
Adds richness and flavor to each bottle.

The step that matters

Letting the wine mellow. Young wine often tastes harsh from alcohol and acid. Storing it for a long period lets these flavours soften and blend, which is why the record calls for at least a year.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Grapefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, brandy, wine, milk. 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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