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Damson Wine

Damson wine is made by fermenting damsons with water, sugar, tartar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Damson Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine 11 gallons of cold soft water and 8 gallons of damsons in a large container.

  2. Mix 30 lbs of raw sugar with 6 oz of red tartar in fine powder.

Ferment

  1. Ferment the mixture.

  2. After 5 days, stir the mixture 2-3 times.

  3. Remove 2-3 quarts of stones, break them, and return them to the vat.

  4. Add 1 gallon of brandy to the mixture after fermentation.

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 + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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 and natural sugars that ferment into the wine.
Raw sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbonation-free body.
Red tartar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps keep the wine stable.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and fortifies the finished wine.

The step that matters

Add the brandy after fermentation. Adding spirit too early stops the yeast before the sugars have converted to alcohol, leaving the wine sweeter and less fully fermented.

“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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