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To Make Mulberry Wine

Mulberry wine is made by fermenting ripe mulberries with water, sugar, isinglass, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Make Mulberry Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Beat the mulberries in a marble mortar.

  2. Mix the mulberries with water in a tub.

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight.

  4. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Add sugar and fining

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the water.

  2. Add the dissolved sugar to a barrel.

  3. Chop the isinglass.

  4. Mix the chopped isinglass with a little wine.

  5. Let the mixture stand near the fire overnight.

  6. Beat the egg whites.

  7. Mix the beaten egg whites with the isinglass.

  8. Add the mixture to the barrel.

  9. Stir the barrel well.

Age and bottle

  1. Do not fill the barrel completely and do not seal it tightly at first.

  2. Store the barrel in a cool place.

  3. Bottle the wine when it is clear.

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 + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Mulberries
Supply the main fruit flavour, colour and aroma of the wine.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and the fuel that yeast turns into alcohol during fermentation.
Isinglass
Acts as a fining agent that gathers suspended particles so the wine becomes clear.
Egg whites
Work as a fining agent, helping to draw cloudy particles out of the wine so it clears.

The step that matters

Leave room in the barrel and do not seal it tightly at first. Fermentation releases carbon dioxide gas. A barrel filled to the top or sealed tightly can build up pressure and burst. Leaving space and a loose closure lets the gas escape while the wine works.

“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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