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To Make 4 Gallons of Elder Wine

A fermented elderberry wine made with cloves, ginger, bread, yeast, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Make 4 Gallons of Elder Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wine

  1. Boil the elderberries in 4 gallons of water for half an hour.

  2. Strain the mixture and add the sugar.

  3. Tie the cloves and ginger in a linen bag and add to the mixture.

  4. Boil again for five minutes and pour into a pan.

  5. When cold, toast the bread on both sides, spread with yeast, and add to the wine.

Cask and finish

  1. Once it has fermented, transfer to a spirit cask and cork it down.

  2. Remove the spice bag and add it to the cask along with the brandy.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Bread + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Clove + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,129 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Elderberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour of the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol, turning the liquid into wine.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and strengthens the finished wine.

The step that matters

Cooling before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must be cold before the toasted bread and yeast are added. Adding them too early can stop fermentation before it starts.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, bread, brandy. 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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