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Drink

Ginger Wine

A fermented alcoholic beverage flavored with ginger and capsicum, sweetened with sugar, and colored with cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and capsicum are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,890 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

  1. Combine alcohol, ginger root, capsicum, and tartaric acid in a container.

  2. Let the mixture stand for one week, then filter it.

Make the sugar water

  1. Boil water and dissolve the crushed sugar in it, then let it cool.

Blend and color

  1. Mix the cooled sugar water with the filtered alcohol mixture.

  2. To color, boil cochineal, cream of tartar, saleratus, and alum in a pint of water until bright red.

  3. Add the color to the ginger wine and mix well.

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. Ginger + capsicumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,890 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Capsicum + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,560 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Capsicum + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,129 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

95% alcohol
Extracts the ginger's flavor and aroma and preserves the wine.
Ginger root
Provides the main spicy aroma and flavor.
Crushed sugar
Adds sweetness and body to balance the alcohol and acidity.
Cochineal
Supplies the red color of the finished wine.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for one week, then filter it.. The alcohol needs the full week to draw flavor out of the bruised ginger and capsicum. Filtering removes the solids so the infusion stays clear.

Swap the capsicum

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Capsicumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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