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Elder Flower Wine

A fermented beverage made from elderflower blossoms, sugar, yeast, lemon juice, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Elder Flower Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Boil the water and sugar together, skimming off any foam.

  2. Pour the boiling sugar water over the elderflower blossoms.

  3. Add the hop yeast and lemon juice, stirring thoroughly.

  4. Let the mixture ferment for 3 days in an open wooden or earthen vessel, covered with a thick woolen blanket.

  5. After 3 days, strain the mixture through a sieve.

  6. Whisk the beaten egg white into the strained wine.

Cask and bottle

  1. Place chopped raisins at the bottom of the cask, then pour in the wine and seal the bung.

  2. After 6 months, the wine will be ready to bottle.

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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Raisin + winetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sugar
Provides the sweetness and the fuel the yeast converts into alcohol.
Hop yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and supports fermentation.
Chopped raisins
Add body, sweetness and extra fermentable sugar in the cask.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiled sugar water. Foam that is not removed can carry off-flavours and impurities into the wine, and the boil dissolves the sugar so yeast can use it evenly.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, wine. 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.

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