Why it works: Sugar and strawberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,060 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Strawberry Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Strain the strawberry juice through a flannel cloth.
Combine the juice with the sugar in a jug.
Ferment
Cover the jug with a muslin cloth.
Store the jug and do not open it until spring.
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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Sugar + strawberrytop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,060 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Feeds the yeast during fermentation, turning into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
- Strawberry juice
- Supplies the fruit flavour and the liquid base in which the sugar ferments.
The step that matters
Leaving the jug unopened. Fermentation gives off gas over the long wait, and opening the jug early lets air in, which can spoil the wine before it has finished maturing.
“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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