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Blackberry Wine

A fermented blackberry wine made with crushed blackberries, water, sugar, egg whites, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Blackberry Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Add 1 quart of boiling water to 1 gallon of crushed blackberries and let it stand for 24 hours.

  2. Squeeze the mixture through a jelly bag to extract the juice.

Flavour and ferment

  1. Add 2 pounds of brown sugar to the juice and stir in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pound cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg together, tie them in a muslin bag, and add to the juice.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a jug or cask until fermentation is complete.

Bottle

  1. Once fermentation is done, cork the jug tightly and bottle after 4 months.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Blackberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and the juice that becomes the wine.
Brown sugar
Supplies the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and adds sweetness and a molasses note.
Egg whites
Beaten into the juice to help clarify it, as the whites bind and carry suspended particles to the top or bottom.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour to the wine.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aromatic spice flavour to the wine.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the wine.

The step that matters

Let fermentation finish before corking. Corking the jug tightly while fermentation is still active can trap gas and build pressure. Waiting until fermentation is complete keeps the sealed jug from bursting and lets the wine stabilise before bottling.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg):

  1. Allspicefits about as well
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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