Name: Raisin Wine, in Imitation Oe Frontignac
Ingredients: 2 pounds raisins for every gallon of wine; 2 pounds loaf sugar for every gallon of wine; moderate quantity of yeast; 1 quart cider flowers for every 3 gallons of wine

Why it works: Wine and cider work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 439 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Raisin Wine, in Imitation Oe Frontignac

Ingredients

2 pounds raisins for every gallon of wine
2 pounds loaf sugar for every gallon of wine
moderate quantity of yeast
1 quart cider flowers for every 3 gallons of wine

Directions

Boil the raisins in water for one hour.
Strain the boiling liquid over the loaf sugar and stir well.
When cool, pour it into a cask and add a moderate quantity of yeast.
Once fermentation subsides, suspend a muslin bag with cider flowers in the cask.
When clear, draw off the wine into bottles.

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.

Wine + cidertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together439 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Raisin + cidertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together588 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Raisin + winetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,324 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + cidertop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,308 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins: Provide the fruit sugars and flavour that ferment into the wine's body.
Loaf sugar: Supplies the sugar that yeast converts to alcohol during fermentation.
Yeast: Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide to start fermentation.
Cider flowers: Added once fermentation subsides, contributing aroma and character to the finished wine.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast to the cooled liquid. Yeast is killed by hot liquid, so the mixture must be cool before it goes into the cask. Adding it too early can stop fermentation before it starts.

Swap the raisin

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

Applefits better
Plumfits better
Grapefits better
Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, cider. 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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Raisin Wine, in Imitation Oe Frontignac