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Drink

Ginger Wine

A fermented beverage made from ginger, citrus, sugar, raisins, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the lemons and Seville oranges, then express the juice.

  2. Boil the water, ginger, and sugar for 30 minutes.

  3. Pour the boiling mixture over the peels and add the juice.

Ferment

  1. When nearly cold, add a little yeast spread on a toast.

  2. Let it stand for 3 days, stirring twice a day.

  3. Transfer to a cask with the raisins and isinglass.

  4. Continue stirring twice a day for 10 days until fermentation ceases.

Mature

  1. It will be ready to use in 3 months.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Orange + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 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

Raw sugar
Provides the sweetness and the food the yeast converts into alcohol during fermentation.
Yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the fermentation.
Raisins
Add fruit sugars and nutrients that feed the fermentation and contribute body and flavour.
Isinglass
A fining agent that helps clarify the wine by settling suspended particles.
Ginger root
Adds the characteristic warm, spicy aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Cooling before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must be nearly cold before the yeast is added. Adding it too early can stop fermentation before it starts.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, sugar, lemon, orange. 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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