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Ginger Wine

A fermented alcoholic beverage flavored with ginger, capsicum, tartaric acid, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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.

  3. Filter the mixture.

Make the syrup and blend

  1. Boil 1 pound of crushed sugar in 1 gallon of water until dissolved.

  2. Allow the sugar water to cool.

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 aromatic and flavour compounds from the ginger and capsicum.
Ginger root
Provides the main aroma and spicy flavour of the wine.
Crushed sugar
Adds sweetness and body to balance the strong alcohol and acidity.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Allow the sugar water to cool. Adding hot sugar water to the alcohol mixture can drive off alcohol through evaporation and dull the aromatics, so the syrup should be fully cooled before blending.

Swap the capsicum

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, sugar. 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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