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Drink

Ginger Wine

A fermented beverage made from water, sugar, ginger, egg whites, lemon juice, lemon rinds, and ale yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon 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 wine

  1. Combine water, sugar, ginger, and beaten egg whites in a pot.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes, then skim and let cool.

  3. Pour into an earthen vessel.

  4. Squeeze in lemon juice and add lemon rinds.

  5. Add ale yeast and let it ferment for 24 hours.

Age and bottle

  1. Transfer to a cask, seal it, and after 2 weeks, bottle it.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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
Provides the sweetness and the fuel that the yeast turns into alcohol.
Ale yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the fermentation.
Egg whites
Bind fine particles and help clarify the liquid when skimmed during boiling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and supports a clean-tasting wine.
Bruised ginger
Releases aromatic oils and flavor into the water during boiling.

The step that matters

Add ale yeast and let it ferment for 24 hours. Yeast needs the liquid cooled first; boiling-hot liquid kills it. Fermentation turns sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, so the wine's strength and character depend on it starting properly.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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