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Very Good Ginger Wine

A fermented ginger wine made with sugar, raisins, lemons, yeast, isinglass, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,768 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Very Good Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil together for half an hour fourteen quarts of water, twelve pounds of sugar, a quarter pound of ginger bruised, and thin rinds of six lemons.

  2. Put the whole, when milk-warm, into a clean dry cask with the juice of the lemons and half a pound of sun raisins.

  3. Add one large spoonful of thick yeast.

  4. Stir the wine every day for ten days.

  5. When it has ceased to ferment, add an ounce of isinglass and a pint of brandy.

  6. Bung the wine close.

  7. Wait two months before bottling; keep longer if too sweet.

  8. If cider fresh from the press is available, substitute it for the water to produce a superior wine.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

578Calories
14 gProtein
2 gFat
127 gCarbs

Counts 4 of 5 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Brandynot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Acton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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.

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. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and provides the wine's sweetness and alcohol.
Sun raisins
Add fruit sugars and body, feeding the fermentation.
Thick yeast
Converts the sugar into alcohol and carbonation during fermentation.
Isinglass
Fining agent that clears the wine by settling out suspended particles.
Brandy
Added after fermentation to raise the alcohol content and strengthen the wine.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast at milk-warm temperature. Yeast works best at a mild warmth; if the mixture is too hot it can be killed, and if too cold fermentation starts slowly or not at all.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, 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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