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Drink

Eldeb Wine

A fermented beverage made from berries, sugar, egg whites, ginger, and yeast-rubbed toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Eldeb Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Pour boiling water over the berries and let it stand for 12 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture and boil it with sugar.

  3. Beat the egg whites and clarify the mixture, skimming it clear.

  4. Add pounded ginger and boil a little longer.

Ferment

  1. Let it cool, then add the yeast-rubbed toast.

  2. Allow it to ferment for 1-2 days before transferring to a barrel rinsed with brandy.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + gingertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,337 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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

Berries
Provide the main flavour, colour and fruit sugars that the wine is made from.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness and body to the wine.
Yeast-rubbed toast
Carries the yeast that starts fermentation once the mixture has cooled.
Egg whites
Bind to particles as they cook, so skimming removes cloudiness and leaves the liquid clear.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast-rubbed toast. Yeast is killed or weakened by very hot liquid. Adding the toast only after the boiled mixture has cooled lets the yeast survive and begin fermenting.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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