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123 Ginger Wine

A fermented ginger wine made with ginger, water, sugar, citrus peels, brandy, yeast, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

123 Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquor

  1. Bruise the ginger and place it in a muslin bag.

  2. Boil the bag in water with the sugar, skimming well.

  3. Add the peels of the oranges and lemons.

  4. Cool the mixture in a tub.

Ferment

  1. Add the juice of the lemons and oranges when pouring the liquor into the barrel.

  2. Mix in the brandy and let it stand for four months.

  3. Optionally, add a little yeast and a few raisins.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  4. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma and flavour to the wine.
Moist sugar
Provides sweetness and the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol.
Seville oranges
Peel and juice add aroma, bitterness and acidity.
Lemons
Peel and juice add acidity and bright citrus aroma.
Brandy
Adds alcohol, strength and a warm finish to the wine.

The step that matters

Boil the bag in water with the sugar, skimming well. Boiling dissolves the sugar and draws flavour from the ginger, while skimming removes scum and impurities that would cloud the wine and spoil its clarity.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Blackberryfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, sugar, orange, lemon, 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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