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Superior Catawba Wine

A fermented wine made from Catawba grapes, sugar, and brimstone fumigation.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Grape and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,490 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Superior Catawba Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Cut the grapes, removing any imperfect or green ones.

  2. Mash the grapes in a tub using a small mallet with a leather cover stuffed with hay to avoid mashing the seeds.

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight.

  4. Press the juice into open vessels and let it sit until scum rises, breaking in cracks and showing white foam. Skim off the scum.

Ferment and age

  1. Fumigate the cask with brimstone.

  2. Pour in the wine and add 2 pounds of sugar for every gallon of juice.

  3. Put the bung in loosely and let it stand for three weeks.

  4. Tighten the bung and let it remain until February.

Bottle and store

  1. Gently drain off the wine, then bottle, cork, and seal it.

  2. Store in a cool place.

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. Grape + sugartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,490 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

Grapes
Provide the juice and natural sugars that ferment into the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished wine.

The step that matters

Skim off the scum. Scum and foam rising from the pressed juice carry wild microbes and solids that can spoil flavor. Removing them before fermentation gives a cleaner, more stable wine.

“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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