Name: Potato Wine
Ingredients: 10 gallons water; ½ pound hops; ½ pound common white ginger; bruised frosted potatoes; ½ pound raw sugar per gallon

Why it works: Ginger and potato work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 992 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

Boil 10 gallons of water with ½ pound of hops and ½ pound of ginger for 30 minutes.
Pour the hot water over the bruised potatoes in a suitable tub or vessel.
Let the mixture stand for 3 days.

Ferment and age

Add yeast to the mixture to start fermentation.
Once fermentation subsides, draw off the liquid into a cask, adding ½ pound of raw sugar for each gallon.
Allow the wine to age in the cask for 3 months before using.

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.

Ginger + potatotop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together992 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together14,054 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Hops + gingertop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Hops + potatotop 39% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Bruised frosted potatoes: Supply the starch and flavour that the yeast ferments into the wine.
Raw sugar: Provides the sugar that feeds fermentation and adds sweetness.
Hops: Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness.
Common white ginger: Adds a warm, spicy aroma to the wine.