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Drink

Parsnip Wine

A fermented beverage made from boiled parsnips, sugar, tartar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and sugar work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 190 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Parsnip Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquid

  1. Boil the parsnips in water until tender.

  2. Drain the parsnips through a sieve without bruising them.

  3. Pour the liquid into a tub and add sugar and crude tartar.

Ferment

  1. Cool the mixture to 75°F (24°C) and add a little new yeast.

  2. Let it stand for four days in a warm room.

  3. Ferment the mixture at 60°F (15°C) if possible.

  4. When fermentation subsides, bung down the cask.

  5. Let the wine stand for at least twelve months before bottling.

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. Parsnip + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together190 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

Parsnips
Supply the flavour and body of the wine, extracted into the boiled liquid.
Loaf sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast converts into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
New yeast
Starts fermentation by converting the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Crude tartar
Adds acidity, which helps keep the wine stable and supports fermentation.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding yeast. Yeast is killed by excessive heat, so the liquid must be cooled to a safe temperature before the yeast goes in. Adding it while still hot can stop fermentation before it starts.

“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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