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Drink

Ginger Wine

A fermented beverage made from water, sugar, lemon juice, ginger, raisins, and aged for two months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger 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 ↓

Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 4 gallons of water with 7 pounds of sugar for 30 minutes, skimming off any foam.

  2. Once the mixture is cold, squeeze in the juice of 2 lemons.

Make the ginger infusion

  1. Boil the lemon peels with 2 ounces of white ginger in 3 pints of water for 1 hour.

  2. Let the ginger mixture cool, then combine it with the lemon mixture in a cask.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add ½ cup of raisins, seal the cask, and let it stand for 2 months.

  2. After 2 months, bottle the ginger wine.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

Sugar
Feeds the fermentation and provides the sweetness and body of the wine.
White ginger
Gives the wine its characteristic spicy, aromatic flavour.
Raisins
Add natural sugars and nutrients that help the fermentation start and continue.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiled syrup. Foam that rises while the sugar water boils carries impurities. Removing it keeps the finished wine clearer and cleaner in flavour.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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