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Black Cherry Wines

A fermented beverage made from black cherries, water, sugar, spices, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Black Cherry Wines

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the must

  1. Mash the cherries and place them in a tub.

  2. Boil 3 gallons of water with 10 lbs of sugar and 2 oz of citric acid crystals.

  3. Skim the boiling mixture.

  4. Pour the boiling mixture over the cherries.

  5. Stir in 1 lb of ground malt.

  6. Let the mixture cool.

Ferment and flavour

  1. Add a little yeast to the mixture to ferment.

  2. After fermentation, skim the liquid.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a cask.

  4. Add 1 lb of bruised cinnamon, 1 lb of bruised allspice, and 1 oz of cloves, or use cherry essence instead.

Clear and mature

  1. When fermentation subsides, clear the wine with 1 oz of dissolved gelatine.

  2. Seal the cask.

  3. Wait 8 to 12 months for the wine to mature.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + malttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Black cherries
Provide the fruit flavour, colour and the juice that becomes the wine base.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and sets the wine's sweetness and alcohol level.
Citric acid
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the wine stable.
Ground malt
Supplies enzymes and sugars that help break down the fruit and feed fermentation.
Yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide to ferment the wine.
Gelatine
Binds suspended particles so they settle, clearing the wine.

The step that matters

Clearing with gelatine. Gelatine must be added only when fermentation subsides. Added too early, it can be overwhelmed by active yeast and fail to settle the haze, leaving the wine cloudy.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Allspicethe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, malt, cinnamon, clove. 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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