Name: Elder Wine
Ingredients: 1 gallon ripe elder berries; 1 quart damsons or sloes for every 2 gallons of wine; water (as needed); 56 pounds coarse moist sugar; 1.5 pounds bruised ginger; 1 pound allspice; 2 ounces cinnamon (tied in a muslin bag); 4 to 6 ounces hops

Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Elder Wine

Ingredients

1 gallon ripe elder berries
1 quart damsons or sloes for every 2 gallons of wine
water (as needed)
56 pounds coarse moist sugar
1.5 pounds bruised ginger
1 pound allspice
2 ounces cinnamon (tied in a muslin bag)
4 to 6 ounces hops

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Boil elder berries and damsons in water until the damsons burst, breaking them with a flat stick.
Strain the mixture and return the liquid to the pot.
Add water to the pulp if the liquid is short of 20 gallons.

Make the wine

Boil for 2 hours with sugar, ginger, allspice, cinnamon bag, and hops.
Let the mixture cool, then transfer to a fermentation vessel.
Add the spice bag suspended by a string above the bottom of the cask.

Ferment and store

Fill the cask for 2 weeks, then seal with stiff brown paper.
The wine will be ready to tap in 2 months and can be stored for years.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,620 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Wine + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,170 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

Elder berries: Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and body of the wine.
Damsons or sloes: Add acidity and tannin, giving the wine structure and a sharper edge.
Sugar: Feeds the fermentation that produces alcohol and leaves sweetness behind.
Hops: Add bitterness that balances the sweetness and helps the wine keep.

Swap the allspice

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

Clovefits better
Nutmegfits better
Cardamomfits better
Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, hops. 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.