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Rhubarb Wine

A fermented beverage made from bruised rhubarb, spring water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Rhubarb Wine

Why it works: Rhubarb and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,852 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Rhubarb Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Bruise the rhubarb stalks in a suitable vessel.

  2. Add 1 gallon of spring water and let it sit for 3-4 days.

  3. Pour off the liquid juice.

Ferment

  1. Add 3 pounds of loaf sugar to the juice and allow it to ferment for 4-5 days in a vat.

  2. Once fermentation ceases, draw off the liquor into a cask.

Rack and finish

  1. Let it sit until March, then rack it off and add more loaf sugar.

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.

  1. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb stalks
Provide the flavour and acidity that give the wine its character.
Loaf sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide, and adds sweetness.
Spring water
Extracts juice from the bruised stalks and dilutes the mixture to a workable strength.

The step that matters

Draw off once fermentation ceases. Leaving the wine on the fermenting solids or waiting too long lets off-flavours develop and can make the wine cloudy. Racking it off the sediment once bubbling stops keeps it clean and stable.

“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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