Skip to main content
Drink

Ginger Wine

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 1 gallon of water with 2 pounds of sugar for 14 minutes, skimming well.

  2. Once cool, squeeze in the juice of 2 lemons.

Make the ginger liquor

  1. Boil the ginger peel with 3 pints of water for 1 hour, then let it cool.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Combine everything in a barrel with 1 cake of yeast and 1 pound of raisins.

  2. Seal the barrel and let it stand for 7 weeks before bottling.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. 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

Sugar
Feeds the yeast and provides the sweetness and alcohol in the finished wine.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during the long standing period.
Raisins
Add fermentable sugar and body to the wine.
Ginger
Adds its sharp, aromatic flavour to the wine.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Let the syrup cool before adding the juice and yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the boiled sugar water must cool fully before the yeast goes in. Skimming removes foam and impurities so the wine stays clearer.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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

Raisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesGinger PopGinger Pop22 recipes