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Drink

Damson Wine

A fermented beverage made from damsons, water, sugar, tartar, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,182 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Damson Wine

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine water and bruised damsons in a large fermentation vessel.

  2. Add raw sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Allow the mixture to ferment.

  4. After fermentation, add dissolved red tartar and bruised cloves.

  5. Let it stand until clear, then bottle.

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. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

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

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Damsons
Provide the fruit flavour, colour and natural acidity that define the wine.
Raw sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Red tartar
Adds acidity and helps keep the wine balanced and stable.
Cloves
Contribute warm spice aroma to the finished wine.

The step that matters

Let it stand until clear, then bottle.. Bottling before the wine has finished fermenting and settled can leave sediment or cause pressure buildup in sealed bottles, so the wine should be allowed to clear fully first.

“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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