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Drink

Ginger Wine

A fermented beverage made with sugar, water, egg whites, ginger, and yeast, flavored with orange and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in water.

  2. Add the egg whites and mix well.

  3. Boil and skim the mixture.

  4. Add the ginger and boil for 30 minutes in a covered vessel.

Ferment and bottle

  1. When nearly cold, add a glassful of fresh yeast.

  2. Let it ferment for 3 days, adding the thin parings of 4 Seville oranges and 6 lemons on the second day.

  3. Cask it and bottle in 6 weeks or less.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + gingertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,337 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Loaf sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol and carbonation.
Egg whites
Bind and clarify the liquid, so impurities coagulate and can be skimmed off.
Jamaica ginger
Supplies the characteristic spicy aroma and flavour of the wine.
Fresh yeast
Drives fermentation, converting sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

The step that matters

Skimming after boiling. Egg whites coagulate and carry impurities to the surface as the mixture heats. Removing that foam clears the liquid; leaving it in can cloud the wine and affect flavour.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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