Skip to main content
Drink

Blackberry Wine

A sweet blackberry wine spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, and finished with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Blackberry Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Press the desired quantity of blackberries in a fruit press.

Spice and boil

  1. To each 2 quarts of juice, add 1½ pounds of white sugar, ½ ounce each of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, and 1 ounce of allspice.

  2. Boil the mixture for a few minutes.

Cool and add brandy

  1. Let the mixture cool.

  2. Add 1 pint of brandy.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Blackberry juice
Forms the liquid base and supplies the main fruit flavor.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and provides food for the fermentation.
Brandy
Adds alcohol, strength and a warm, rounded aroma to the finished wine.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet spice aroma.
Cloves
Contributes a strong, pungent spice aroma.

The step that matters

Add the brandy after cooling. Boiling drives off alcohol and volatile aromatics, so adding brandy to a hot mixture would lose much of its strength and fragrance. Cooling first keeps the brandy's character in the finished wine.

Swap the blackberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, allspice, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Blackberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, allspice, brandy. 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.

You might also like

Blackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipesCinnamon TinctureCinnamon Tincture10 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipes