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Drink

Elder Wine

A fermented beverage made from elder berries, sugar, water, ginger, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Elder Wine

Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Elder Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Extract the juice from the elder berries to yield about 6 quarts.

  2. Wash the husks of the berries in 16 quarts of water.

  3. Boil 6 ounces of ginger in water, strain, and boil a second time.

Ferment and finish

  1. Combine the ginger water and elderberry juice with the water used to wash the husks.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a cask and allow fermentation to complete.

  3. Add some well-dried spices to the cask after fermentation.

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. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Elder berries
Provides the main fruit juice, flavor and color for the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and sweetness.
Ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma and flavor to 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.

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