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Drink

Elder Wine

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Elder Wine

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 Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pour boiling water over the elderberries.

  2. Let the elderberries stand covered for 24 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve or bag.

  4. Break the fruit to express all the juice.

  5. Measure the liquid.

  6. Add the appropriate amount of sugar for every gallon.

Make the must

  1. Boil the juice and sugar with the ginger, cloves, and raisins for 1 hour. Skim the liquid continuously while boiling.

  2. Let the mixture cool until milk-warm.

  3. Transfer the cooled mixture to a clean, dry cask.

Ferment and age

  1. Add 3 to 4 tablespoons of fresh yeast for every 9 gallons of wine.

  2. Allow it to ferment for about 2 weeks.

  3. Add the brandy.

  4. Seal the cask.

  5. Let it stand for several months before bottling.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Clove + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 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

Elderberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and the juice that becomes the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and setting the wine's sweetness.
Brewer's yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and helps preserve the wine during long aging.
Raisins
Add body, sweetness and extra fruit sugar to the must.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool until milk-warm before adding yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so cooling to about body-warm temperature is needed before the yeast can start fermenting the sugars.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, clove, turkey, brandy, wine. 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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