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Elder Wine

A fermented elderberry wine made with sugar, spices, toast, yeast, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Elder Wine

Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Elder Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Boil elderberries in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and collect the juice.

  3. Add ¾ pound of sugar to each quart of juice.

  4. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes with spices.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Pour the mixture into a tub and let it cool to a warm temperature.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a barrel.

  3. Add toast and yeast to the barrel to ferment.

  4. When bubbling stops, add 1 quart of brandy for every 8 gallons of liquor.

  5. Seal the barrel.

  6. Bottle the wine in spring or at Christmas.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Clove + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

Elderberries
Provide the main flavour, colour and body of the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
Yeast
Converts the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Brandy
Added once bubbling stops to raise the alcohol level and stabilise the wine.
Toast
Gives the fermenting mixture a base for yeast to work on and adds a toasted aroma.

The step that matters

Add the brandy only after bubbling stops. Adding spirit while yeast is still fermenting would halt fermentation early and leave the wine sweeter and less developed. Waiting until bubbling ends lets the yeast finish converting sugar before the brandy raises the alcohol level.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, clove, brandy. 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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