Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Elder Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Pick ripe elderberries and place them in a stone jar.
Heat the jar in an oven or boiling water until hot throughout.
Strain the berries through a coarse sieve, wringing them to extract juice into a clean kettle.
Clarify and cask
Add 1 pound of sugar for every quart of juice, boil, and skim until clear.
Pour the clear liquid into a cask, adding 1 ounce of dissolved isinglass and 6 whole eggs for every 10 gallons.
Age and bottle
Seal the cask and let it stand for 6 months before bottling.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Elderberries
- Provide the fruit juice that gives the wine its colour and flavour.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and fuels fermentation, shaping the wine's body and alcohol level.
- Isinglass
- Acts as a fining agent that gathers suspended particles so they settle and the wine clears.
- Eggs
- Act as a fining agent, helping bind fine particles so they drop out of the wine.
The step that matters
Adding the isinglass and eggs. Fining works by binding suspended particles so they settle out. The isinglass must be fully dissolved, and the liquid should already be clear from skimming, or the haze will not clear properly.
“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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