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Drink

Ginger Wine

A beverage made from ginger, spices, sugar, and alcohol, clarified and colored with cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ginger Wine

40 gallons

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spice infusion

  1. Macerate the cinnamon bark, pimento, mace, capsicum, ginger root, and alcohol for 15 days.

  2. Strain or filter the mixture.

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar, tartaric acid, and cream of tartar in warm water to make syrup.

  2. Clarify the syrup with the white of 2 eggs.

  3. Add soft water to the syrup to make a total of 40 gallons.

Finish and age

  1. Color the mixture with cochineal and let it stand for 6 months before use.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + capsicumtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Capsicum + gingertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Ginger root
Adds the main spicy, warming flavor that defines the wine.
White sugar
Provides sweetness and body, and helps balance the sharp acidity.
Tartaric acid
Adds acidity for a tart, bright taste and helps keep the wine crisp.
Cinnamon bark
Contributes warm, sweet aromatic flavor from the spice infusion.
Alcohol
Extracts flavor from the spices and preserves the finished wine.
Eggs (white only)
Egg whites collect fine particles during clarifying, leaving the syrup clear.

The step that matters

Clarify the syrup with the white of 2 eggs. Egg white proteins coagulate when heated and trap suspended particles, which then rise or settle out. Adding and removing them gently yields a clear wine; stirring or heating too harshly can break up the coagulated mass and leave it cloudy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, capsicum, ginger, sugar, cream. 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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