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Drink

Wine, Gilliflower

A fermented beverage made from gilliflower, sugar, yeast, and betony syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Wine, Gilliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liquor

  1. In a large pot, combine 3 gallons of water and 6 pounds of powdered white sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes, skimming off any scum that rises.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool.

Add the flowers and yeast

  1. In a bowl, mix 3 ounces of syrup of betony with 1 tablespoon of ale yeast.

  2. Add this mixture to the cooled liquid and stir well.

  3. Remove the gilliflowers from the stalks and add them to the liquid.

  4. Cover with a cloth and let it infuse for 3 days.

Strain and settle

  1. Strain the wine and transfer it to a cask.

  2. Let it settle for 3 to 4 weeks before bottling.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Powdered white sugar
Provides the sweetness and the fermentable sugar that the yeast converts into alcohol.
Ale yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, turning the sweet liquid into wine.
Gilliflowers
Infuse the liquid during steeping, adding their aroma and flavour to the wine.
Syrup of betony
Adds sweetness and its own flavour to the mixture that is combined with the yeast.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by hot liquid. Adding the yeast mixture only after the boiled liquid has cooled keeps it alive so it can ferment the sugar.

“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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