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To Keep Cider

A preserved cider flavored with sugar, egg whites, salt, and grated horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Keep Cider

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cider

  1. Dissolve 1 pound of sugar in 1 gallon of cider.

  2. Add the beaten egg whites and coarse sea salt.

  3. Leave the mixture open until fermentation ceases, then seal it tightly.

  4. Allow it to ferment to your desired sweetness.

Flavour and store

  1. Add 1½ tumblers of grated horseradish to each barrel and shake well.

  2. After a few weeks, rack off the cider and seal it in clean casks.

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).

  2. Egg + horseradishtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together694 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Sugar + horseradishtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,314 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Feeds the fermentation and sets the final sweetness of the cider.
Egg whites
Help clarify the cider by binding suspended particles so they settle out.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma and heat that infuses into the cider.

The step that matters

Leave the mixture open until fermentation ceases, then seal it tightly. Fermentation needs air exposure early on and must finish before sealing. Sealing too soon can trap carbon dioxide and stall or spoil the fermentation, leaving the cider unstable and sweeter than intended.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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