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To Make Lemon Wine to Drink Like Citron-Water

A fermented lemon wine made by steeping lemon peels in brandy, sweetening with sugar syrup, and aging for months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Make Lemon Wine to Drink Like Citron-Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peel

  1. Pare the lemons very thin and place the peels in the brandy.

  2. Let the peels stand in the brandy for 14 days.

Make the base

  1. Boil the water with 40 pounds of sugar for 30 minutes.

  2. Cool the boiled water in a tub.

  3. Make the lemon juice into a syrup with 3 pounds of sugar.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of barm to the cooled water.

  5. Let it work for 2 days.

Combine and age

  1. Combine the brandy, peels, syrup, and the water mixture.

  2. Stir well and close the cask.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 3 months.

  4. Bottle it.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Brandy + syruptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together561 recipes

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Lemons
Their peel and juice supply the main citrus aroma and sour flavour.
French brandy
Steeps the lemon peel to extract oils and adds spirit strength and body.
Sugar
Sweetens the wine and, through fermentation, helps produce alcohol.
Barm
Yeast culture that starts fermentation in the sugared water.

The step that matters

Add the barm to the cooled water. Yeast is killed by hot liquid, so the boiled water must be cooled before the barm is added to start fermentation safely.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, sugar, syrup. 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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