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Elderberry Blossom Wine

A fermented wine made from elderberry blossoms, water, sugar, citrus rinds, toasted bread, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Elderberry Blossom Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquid

  1. Boil the elderberry blossoms in 3 gallons of water for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Add 9 pounds of sugar and the rinds of 2 oranges and 2 lemons to every gallon of liquid.

  4. Boil for another 20 minutes.

Ferment and bottle

  1. When nearly cold, add a piece of toasted bread covered with yeast.

  2. The next day, transfer the mixture into a cask with the pulp of the oranges and lemons.

  3. Leave the cask open for about a week to ferment.

  4. Bottle the wine in 6 weeks.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Elderberry + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

  4. Orange + breadtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,084 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Elderberry blossoms
Provide the main floral aroma and flavour of the wine.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and gives the yeast the fuel it turns into alcohol.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the wine's fermentation.
Orange and lemon rinds
Add aromatic citrus oils and a bright, slightly acidic edge.

The step that matters

Add the yeast when the liquid is nearly cold. Yeast is a living organism that heat can kill. Adding it to liquid that is still hot can stop fermentation before it starts, so the liquid should cool first.

Swap the elderberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Elderberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, lemon, bread. 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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