Skip to main content
Drink

Elder Wine

A fermented beverage made from elderberry juice, water, sugar, yeast, and optionally brandy, raisins, and elderflower blossoms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Elder Wine

Why it works: Elderberry and lemon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Elder Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the elderberry juice, water, and brown sugar until dissolved.

  2. Add yeast and allow to ferment.

Age and bottle

  1. After fermentation, add brandy and seal the container for three months.

  2. For the second recipe, combine water, white sugar, elderflower blossoms, lemon juice, yeast, and raisins.

  3. Ferment and then bottle the mixture.

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. Elderberry + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Elderberry + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10 recipes

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

  3. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Elderberry juice
Provides the main fruit flavour and colour of the wine.
Brown sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and depth of flavour.
Yeast
Converts sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and helps preserve the wine during aging.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and provides fuel for the second fermentation.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and supports a clean fermentation.

The step that matters

Adding the brandy after fermentation. Brandy added while the yeast is still active can halt fermentation early and leave the wine sweeter and less stable. Waiting until fermentation finishes lets the yeast complete its work before the alcohol level is raised.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against elderberry, sugar, brandy, raisin. 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.

You might also like

Raisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesElderberry WineElderberry Wine35 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipes