Why it works: Lemon and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,351 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓
Lemon Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Peel and slice the lemons, but use only the rind of 25 of them, and put them into the cold water.
Let it stand 8 or 9 days, squeezing the lemons well every day.
Ferment and bottle
Then strain the water off and put it into a cask with the sugar.
Let it work some time, and when it has ceased working, put in the isinglass.
Stop the cask down; in about six months put in the brandy and bottle the wine off.
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. See the original page.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Lemon + brandytop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,351 recipes
Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lemons
- Supply acidity, aroma and flavour from the rind and pulp.
- Sugar (in the method)
- Provides sweetness and feeds the fermentation that produces alcohol.
- Brandy
- Raises the alcohol content, which helps preserve the wine.
- Isinglass (in the method)
- Acts as a fining agent that helps clear suspended particles from the wine.
The step that matters
Adding the isinglass. Isinglass should go in only after fermentation has stopped. While yeast is still active, it keeps stirring the liquid and carbon dioxide keeps rising, so the fining agent cannot settle the haze properly and the wine stays cloudy.
“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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