Name: Raisin Wine with Sugar
Ingredients: 1 gallon soft water; 4 pounds fresh raisins; 1 to 1.5 pounds Lisbon sugar; ½ pint thick yeast

Why it works: Raisin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Raisin Wine with Sugar

Ingredients

1 gallon soft water
4 pounds fresh raisins
1 to 1.5 pounds Lisbon sugar
½ pint thick yeast

Directions

Prepare the must

Combine soft water and fresh raisins in a large tub; stir frequently and cover with a sack or blanket.
After about two weeks, when the raisins remain still, press the fruit and strain the liquid.

Ferment in the cask

Add the strained liquid and Lisbon sugar to a dry, warm wine cask; stir well when the cask is half full.
Add thick yeast and fill the cask with the remaining liquid; repeat this while fermentation lasts, which will take a month or more.

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.

Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh raisins: Provide the fruit sugars, flavour and body that the fermentation converts into wine.
Lisbon sugar: Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness, with more alcohol produced as fermentation proceeds.
Thick yeast: Converts sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the fermentation.

“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.