Name: Ginger Wine
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon cayenne essence; 2 teaspoons ginger essence; a little burnt sugar; 2 lbs lump sugar; 5 pints boiling water; ½ oz tartaric acid

Why it works: Ginger and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wine

Combine cayenne essence, ginger essence, and burnt sugar in a large container.
Add boiling water and stir until the sugar dissolves.
Allow the mixture to cool, then add tartaric acid.
Bottle the ginger wine and seal.

Store and serve

Store in a cool place; it will keep for twelve months.
Serve with hot or cold water.

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.

Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together14,054 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Lump sugar: Provides sweetness and the fermentable base that gives the wine its body.
Tartaric acid: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the wine stable.
Ginger essence: Supplies the main aroma and spicy ginger flavour.
Cayenne essence: Adds a sharp, warming heat that balances the sweetness.

“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.