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Wines and Cordials

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Wines and Cordials

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Gather ripe grapes in dry weather and place them in a press. Squeeze gently to avoid breaking the stones.

  2. Strain the juice well and let it settle. Draw the clear juice into a well-seasoned cask and seal it for 48 hours.

  3. After 48 hours, vent the cask near the bung-hole and insert a removable peg. Seal it again after two days.

  4. The wine will be ready to drink in three months.

  5. To color the wine, stew damsons or black sloes with deep-colored wine and enough sugar to make a syrup. A pint of this syrup can color a hogshead of claret or port.

  6. To improve vitiated wine, boil a pint of clarified honey, a pint of water with steeped raisins, and three cups of good wine until a third is reduced. Skim off the scum.

  7. Pour the hot mixture into the vitiated wine and let it stand without sealing.

  8. Place a linen bag with mace, nutmeg, and cloves in the cask for three to four days.

  9. For further improvement, replace the spice bag with a small bag of bruised white mustard-seed.

  10. To restore 'pricked' wines, rack the wine to another cask with fresh lees, then mix a pint of strong aqua vitee with half a pound of yellow beeswax, heating until melted.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Grape + honeytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together707 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (grape, sugar, honey, raisin, red wine, nutmeg, clove):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against grape, sugar, honey, raisin, red wine, nutmeg, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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