Skip to main content
Drink

Elderberry Wine

A fermented beverage made from elderberries, water, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, toast, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Elderberry Wine

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Elderberry Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquid

  1. Combine 10 quarts of elderberries and 5 quarts of water in a large container.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

  3. Boil the mixture and skim off any foam.

  4. Strain the liquid.

Add flavourings and ferment

  1. For every gallon of liquid, add 3 pounds of sugar, ½ ounce of cloves, 1 ounce of cinnamon, and 2 ounces of ginger.

  2. Boil the mixture again.

  3. Add a slice of toast covered with fresh yeast to ferment.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 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 of the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and becomes alcohol during fermentation, while also adding sweetness.
Fresh yeast
Converts the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Cinnamon
Adds warm spiced aroma to the wine.

The step that matters

Add the yeast to ferment. Yeast converts the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. The liquid should be cooled and the sugar dissolved before the yeast goes in, since heat can kill yeast and leave the wine unfermented.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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

Ginger PopGinger Pop22 recipesGinger WineGinger Wine12 recipesGinger BeerGinger Beer11 recipesCinnamon TinctureCinnamon Tincture10 recipes