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Drink

Elderblossom Wine

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Elderberry and lemon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Elderblossom Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the must

  1. Carefully pick the elderberry blossoms from the stems and pack them into a quart measure.

  2. Combine sugar and water in a pot over heat; stir until sugar dissolves, then bring to a boil without stirring.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes, skim, and add the elderberry blossoms.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool until lukewarm.

Ferment

  1. Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water and add it along with the lemon juice to the mixture.

  2. Transfer to an earthen jar and let stand for 6 days, stirring thoroughly 3 times daily.

  3. On the seventh day, strain through a cloth and add the seeded raisins.

Bottle

  1. Pour into glass preserve jars and cover tightly. Do not bottle until January.

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. Elderberry + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Elderberry + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

Elderberry blossoms
Provide the main floral and aromatic flavour of the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, which turns it into alcohol and carbon dioxide, and adds sweetness.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol during the resting period.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and supports a clean fermentation.
Raisins
Add extra fermentable sugar and body to the wine.

The step that matters

Do not bottle until January. Bottling before fermentation has fully finished can trap carbon dioxide, so the jars may build pressure or burst. Letting the wine rest and clear for months gives the yeast time to finish and the flavour time to settle.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Orangefits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Limefits about as well

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