Name: Wine, Birch
Ingredients: 1 gallon birch sap; 1 quart honey or 2½ pounds sugar; 2 ounces hops (for every 9 gallons); a few cloves; 1-2 lemon rinds; yeast; isinglass

Why it works: Clove and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Wine, Birch

Ingredients

Directions

Collect the sap

Bore a hole in each birch tree about 1 foot from the ground and insert a faucet to collect sap.
Place a vessel to catch the sap as it flows for several days, then stop the hole with a peg.

Make the wine

In a pot, combine the birch sap, honey (or sugar), hops, cloves, and lemon rinds.
Boil the mixture while stirring.
Add yeast to the mixture and ferment.
Transfer the mixture to a cask and refine with isinglass.
Bottle the wine after about 2 months; it will be ready to use in another 2 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.

Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Honey + clovetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together736 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Honey + lemontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,707 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Hops + clovetop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Hops + lemontop 40% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Birch sap: Forms the liquid base that the fermentation turns into wine.
Honey or sugar: Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and sweetness.
Hops: Adds bitterness that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the wine.
Yeast: Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Isinglass: Fines the wine, helping suspended particles settle out for clarity.