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Drink

Rose Wine

A fermented beverage made from rose water, rose leaves, sugar, toasted bread, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rose and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,584 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Rose Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Combine 3 gallons of rose water and a sufficient quantity of rose leaves in a well-glazed earthen vessel.

  2. Cover the vessel and place it in hot water for 1 hour to extract the rose essence.

  3. Once cooled, press the rose leaves into the liquid and steep fresh leaves, repeating until the desired strength is achieved.

Ferment

  1. Add 3 pounds of loaf sugar to the mixture and stir until dissolved.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a fermentation vessel, adding the toasted bread covered with yeast.

  3. Let it ferment for about 30 days until ripe and flavorful.

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. Rose + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

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

  2. Rose + breadtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together153 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Sugar + breadtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and the food that yeast consumes to produce alcohol during fermentation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the wine's transformation.
Rose leaves
Supply the rose aroma and flavour that the liquid absorbs during steeping.

The step that matters

Adding the toasted bread covered with yeast. Yeast needs active, living cells to start fermentation; if it is weak or dead, the wine may stall or spoil. Toasting the bread hard keeps it from crumbling and clouding the liquid.

“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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