Why it works: Cider and port wine share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41 recipes. Both carry ethyl pentanoate, which smells yeast, fruit. The science ↓
Port Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Make the wine
Combine the prepared cider and port wine in a large container.
Add the wild grapes, bruised rhatany root, tincture of kino, loaf sugar, and spirits.
Let the mixture stand for a period to ferment.
Finish and age
After fermentation, draw off the liquid carefully and fine it down.
Rack the wine into another cask for aging.
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.
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Cider + port winetop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together41 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).
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Cider + grapetop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together349 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Port wine + grapetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
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Cider + spirittop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together26 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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Port wine + spirittop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Prepared cider
- Forms the base liquid that ferments into the wine.
- Loaf sugar
- Feeds the fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
- Spirits
- Raises the alcohol content and helps preserve the wine.
- Wild grapes
- Add fruit flavour and sugars to the fermenting mixture.
- Rhatany root
- Contributes astringency and colour to the wine.
The step that matters
Drawing off and fining after fermentation. Drawing off carefully leaves the sediment behind, and fining clears the haze left by yeast and fruit particles. Disturbing the sediment makes the wine cloudy and gives it a rough, muddy taste.
Swap the grape
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, port wine, sugar, spirit):
- Applefits better
- Figfits better
- Plumfits better
- Grapethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cider, port wine, sugar, spirit. 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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