Why it works: Honey and apple work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 569 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Sweet White Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the must
Boil 3 pints of water and add 3 lbs of glucose or honey and 2 lbs of grated apples.
Ferment in a cask open at the top with a tap at the bottom.
Bruise the fruit.
Add the bruised fruit, broken cherry stones, and sliced angelica to the cask.
Pour in 4 gallons of cooled boiled water.
Mix 2 oz of German yeast with tepid water and sugar.
Add the yeast mixture if you need to speed up fermentation.
Ferment and finish
Draw off the liquor after fermentation.
Transfer the liquor to a cask with 7 lbs of sugar.
Once fermentation subsides in about 10 days, add 2 oz of soaked and dissolved gelatine.
Bung up the cask.
Wait about 3 months for the wine to be ready.
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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Honey + appletop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together569 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Apple + angelicatop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Honey + sugartop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,932 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + angelicatop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together487 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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
- Glucose or honey
- Provides fermentable sugar that feeds the yeast and builds the wine's alcohol and sweetness.
- German yeast
- Converts sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and additional fermentable sugar to the finished wine.
- Gelatine
- Settles suspended particles so the wine clears as it rests.
- Whiteheart cherries
- Contribute fruit flavour, colour and sugars to the wine.
The step that matters
Adding the gelatine. Gelatine must be fully soaked and dissolved before it goes in, and added only once fermentation has subsided. Added while the wine is still actively fermenting, it can be disturbed and fail to clear the liquid.
Swap the white currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (honey, apple, sugar, angelica):
- Pearfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Apricotfits better
- White currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against honey, apple, sugar, angelica. 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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