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Cleat Wine

A wine made by steeping dried cleats in boiling water, sweetened with sugar and ginger, and fermented with yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,833 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Cleat Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wine

  1. Pour 1 gallon of boiling water over 1 quart of dried cleats and let it stand for 24 hours.

  2. Strain and squeeze the mixture.

  3. Add 1 pound of sugar and 2 ounces of bruised ginger to the liquid.

  4. Slice 2 oranges and add them to the mixture.

  5. Boil for 40 minutes, then pour into a vessel.

  6. When nearly cold, stir in 1 tablespoon of yeast.

  7. Let it stand for 4 to 5 days.

Age and bottle

  1. Transfer to a barrel or stone bottle, topping up with reserved liquid.

  2. After 3 months, bottle the wine, adding a little isinglass to each bottle.

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. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger 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

Dried cleats
Provide the main flavour and body of the wine as they steep in the hot water.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast so it can ferment, and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
Yeast
Converts sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Oranges
Add acidity and citrus aroma to balance the sweetness.
Ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma to the wine.

The step that matters

When nearly cold, stir in the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so it must be added only once the mixture has cooled enough. Adding it too early can stop fermentation before it starts.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Lemonfits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Vanillafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger. 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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