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Drink

To Make Ginger Wine

A fermented beverage made from ginger, spices, sugar, lemon rind, stale bread, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Make Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquid

  1. Combine water, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and sugar in a large pot.

  2. Stir until sugar dissolves.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, skimming off any foam.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pan.

  6. Let it cool to lukewarm.

Add the yeast and ferment

  1. Toast stale bread until very brown.

  2. Spread both sides of the toasted bread with new ale yeast.

  3. Add the bread to the mixture.

  4. Cover the mixture with a cloth.

  5. Let it sit for 24 hours.

  6. Add the juice of the lemons.

  7. Stir daily for 3 days.

  8. Transfer the mixture to a clean, dry barrel.

  9. Seal the barrel.

Bottle and age

  1. Bottle and cork the wine well.

  2. Keep the bottled wine for 5-6 weeks.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Ginger
Adds its sharp, warm aroma and spicy flavour to the wine.
New ale yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol, turning the liquid into wine.
Loaf sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol and gives sweetness.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright citrus flavour to balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool to lukewarm before adding the yeast bread. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the liquid must be cooled to lukewarm before the yeast-spread bread goes in. Adding it while the liquid is still hot can stop fermentation before it starts.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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