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Drink

Cider Without Apples

A fermented beverage made from water, sugar, tartaric acid, yeast, flour, and raisins, without apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cider Without Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Combine 1 gallon of cold water, 1 lb of sugar, 3 oz of tartaric acid, and 1 tablespoon of yeast in a large container. Shake well and let sit overnight.

Make the large batch

  1. For a larger batch, mix 5 gallons of hot water with 30 lbs of brown sugar and 3.75 lb of tartaric acid in a barrel.

  2. Add 20 gallons of cold water and 3 pints of yeast mixed into a paste with 3.75 lb of flour and 1 pint of water.

  3. Let the mixture work for 24 hours, ensuring the yeast runs out at the bung.

Bottle

  1. When bottling, add 2-3 broken raisins to each bottle for flavor.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol and carbonation.
Tartaric acid
Adds the sharp, acidic bite that stands in for the tartness of apples.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Flour
Forms a paste with the yeast that helps it disperse and start fermenting.
Raisins
Add sweetness and fruity flavor to each bottle.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture work for 24 hours. Fermentation is active during this time, and the yeast gives off carbon dioxide that must escape through the bung. Watching that the yeast runs out at the bung shows the batch is fermenting properly.

“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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