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Drink

Ginger Wine

A fermented alcoholic beverage flavored with cinnamon, pimento, mace, cayenne pepper, ginger, sugar, tartaric acid, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Ginger Wine

40 gallons

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the spices

  1. Macerate the cinnamon bark, pimento, mace, cayenne pepper, and ginger root in 5 gallons of alcohol for 15 days.

  2. Strain or filter the mixture.

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve 30 pounds of white sugar and ½ pound of tartaric acid in warm water to make syrup.

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

Blend and age

  1. Add enough soft water to make 40 gallons.

  2. 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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 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
Supplies the main aroma and warm, spicy flavor of the wine.
Alcohol
Extracts the flavor from the spices and preserves the finished wine.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and body to balance the alcohol and acidity.
Tartaric acid
Adds tartness and brightness to balance the sugar.
Egg whites
Bind to particles in the syrup so they can be removed, clearing the liquid.

The step that matters

Clarify the syrup with the whites of 2 eggs. Egg whites coagulate as they heat and trap suspended particles, which then rise or settle out. Gentle handling keeps the wine clear rather than cloudy.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, clove, pepper, ginger, sugar, cream, egg. 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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