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Spiced Elderberry Wine

A fermented beverage made from elderberries, water, sugar, ginger, cloves, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Spiced Elderberry Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pick the berries from the stalks.

  2. Pour boiling water over the berries and stir well; let sit overnight.

  3. Strain the liquid through a hair sieve.

Make the wort

  1. Boil the strained liquid for 30 minutes with sugar, ginger, and cloves, skimming as needed.

  2. When nearly cold, pour into a jar, add yeast, and fill the jar completely.

Ferment and bottle

  1. When fermentation has ceased, bottle the wine.

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

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

  3. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 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 tannins for the wine's body.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide, and adds sweetness.
Yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the wine.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the wine.

The step that matters

Filling the jar completely. Leaving headspace lets air contact the wine, which can encourage spoilage and oxidation. A full jar limits oxygen during fermentation, helping the wine stay clean and fresh-tasting.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger. 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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