Why it works: Raisin and sage work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 26 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓
Sage Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the must
Boil the spring water for 15 minutes until blood-warm.
Add the raisins, shredded sage, and ale yeast to the water.
Stir well and cover the mixture, letting it stand in a warm place for 6 to 7 days, stirring once daily.
Ferment and bottle
Strain the mixture and transfer it to a cask.
Allow it to ferment for 3 to 4 days, then seal the cask.
After 6 to 7 days, add 1 to 2 quarts of Malaga sack.
Once it is clear, bottle the wine.
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.
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Raisin + sagetop 22% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together26 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Malaga raisins
- Provide the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, plus fruit flavour.
- Ale yeast
- Converts the sugars in the must into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
- Red sage
- Adds herbal aroma and flavour to the wine.
- Malaga sack
- Adds fortifying spirit and sweetness to the finished wine.
The step that matters
Adding the Malaga sack. The sack is added after the initial fermentation, when the mixture has begun to settle. Adding it at the wrong time can disrupt the yeast and alter the wine's strength and sweetness, so timing matters.
“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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