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Drink

Wine, Elderberry

A fermented beverage made from elderberries, sugar, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, and hops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Wine, Elderberry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Put elderberries in a pot with half the quantity of water.

  2. Cook the elderberries until they burst, beating them frequently with a stick.

  3. Strain the liquid.

  4. Return the liquid to the pot.

  5. Add water to the strained liquid until the total volume reaches 20 gallons.

Make the must

  1. Boil the liquid with 56 pounds of sugar for 30 minutes.

  2. Cool the mixture.

  3. Ferment the mixture as usual.

Age in the cask

  1. Transfer the fermented mixture to a cask.

  2. In a muslin bag, combine bruised ginger, allspice, cinnamon, and hops.

  3. Suspend the muslin bag in the cask with a string.

  4. Allow the mixture to ferment in the cask for 2 weeks.

  5. Fill up the cask as needed.

  6. Wait until the wine is ready to tap in 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.

  1. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Elderberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour once cooked and strained into the juice.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and provides sweetness and body in the finished wine.
Hops
Add bitterness and a preserving quality that balances the sweetness of the wine.
Ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma carried into the wine through the muslin bag.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet spice aroma to the finished wine.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, cinnamon, hops. 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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