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Elder-berry Wine

A fermented elderberry beverage sweetened with sugar, ginger, cloves, and finished with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Elder-berry Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Gather and pick the elderberries.

  2. In a clean tub, mash the berries and add 1 quart of water.

  3. Let the mixture sit for three days, stirring often.

  4. Strain the mixture and sweeten to taste.

Boil and ferment

  1. In a kettle, boil the juice for 1 hour and 20 minutes with a little ginger and cloves.

  2. Transfer the juice to a cask and let it cool.

  3. If you have 4 gallons, stir in 1 tea-cup of yeast.

  4. After fermentation, add a little brandy.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + teatop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together216 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Clove + teatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 fruit flavour, colour and natural pectin for the wine's body.
Yeast
Converts the sugars in the juice into alcohol during fermentation.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast. Yeast must be added to cooled juice; heat can kill it, and it needs time to convert sugars into alcohol. Stirring it in too early may stop fermentation before it starts.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, tea, 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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