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Elderberry Wine

A fermented beverage made from elderberries, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Elderberry Wine

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 ↓

Elderberry Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pour 4 quarts of boiling water over 8 quarts of elderberries.

  2. Let it stand for 24 hours, stirring occasionally.

  3. Squeeze the juice through a jelly bag.

Make the must

  1. Add 3 pounds of sugar, 1 ounce of powdered cinnamon, and ½ ounce of powdered cloves to the 4 quarts of juice.

  2. Boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Set aside to ferment in a stone jar covered with a cloth.

Rack and bottle

  1. Rack it off carefully to avoid disturbing the lees once fermentation is complete.

  2. Bottle and cork tightly.

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.

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.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Elderberries
Provide the main flavour, colour and natural sugars that the fermentation turns into wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and adding sweetness.
Powdered cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the wine.
Powdered cloves
Adds a strong, aromatic spice note to the wine.

The step that matters

Rack it off carefully once fermentation is complete. Racking siphons the wine off the settled lees, the sediment of dead yeast and fruit solids. Disturbing them can cloud the wine and add off-flavours, so the wine should be moved gently.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon. 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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