Name: Rhubarb Wine
Ingredients: 25 large stalks of rhubarb; 10 gallons cold water; 15 pounds brown sugar; 1 cup brewers' yeast or 2 compressed yeast cakes; 1 cup warm water

Why it works: Rhubarb and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,852 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Rhubarb Wine

Ingredients

25 large stalks of rhubarb
10 gallons cold water
15 pounds brown sugar
1 cup brewers' yeast or 2 compressed yeast cakes
1 cup warm water

Directions

Prepare

Place the rhubarb in a tub and mash it with a potato masher.
Add the cold water and let it stand for 24 hours.
Stir in the brown sugar until dissolved.
Add the yeast or dissolved yeast cakes in warm water.

Ferment and bottle

Strain the mixture into a cask and let it stand overnight.
Rack off the liquid and bottle it.
Store the bottles in a cold place.

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.

Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,852 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb: Provides the tart acidity and the main flavour of the wine.
Brown sugar: Feeds the yeast, which turns the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Brewers' yeast or compressed yeast cakes: Ferments the sugar into alcohol, producing the wine.

“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.