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Cider Preparation

A method for preparing cider using wood, ashes, lime, milk, mustard, salt, and chalk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 392 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cider Preparation

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cider

  1. Add 1 pint each of hickory wood, ashes, and fresh slacked lime to open casks or barrels.

  2. Stir the ashes and lime into 1 quart of new milk.

  3. Mix the milk mixture into the cider.

  4. Allow the pomace to rise to the surface and skim it off.

  5. Let the mixture sit for 10 hours and draw off through a strainer.

Barrel and sulphur

  1. Barrel the cider.

  2. Sulphur the barrel by dipping cotton cloth in melted sulphur. Cut the cloth into strips. Light one end of a strip. Introduce the lit strip into the bung-hole to sulphur the cider.

  3. Fill the barrel with cider.

  4. Place the barrel in a cool cellar.

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. Lime + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cider + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Milk + cidertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Lime + cidertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Milk + mustardtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

New milk
Its proteins bind with the lime and ashes so suspended particles clump and settle out for skimming.
Fresh slacked lime
Reacts with acids in the cider to neutralise them and help the solids precipitate.
Ashes
Alkaline material that works with the lime to shift the cider's acidity and aid clarifying.
Sulphur (in the method)
Burning sulphur releases sulphur dioxide, which inhibits unwanted microbes and oxidation in the cask.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture settle before drawing off. Fining works only when the milk and lime particles have time to clump and rise. Drawing off too early carries the pomace and sediment into the barrel and leaves the cider cloudy.

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cider, mustard):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cider, mustard. 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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