Skip to main content
Drink

Raisin Wine with Cider

A fortified wine made by steeping raisins in cider, then adding brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cider and brandy work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Raisin Wine with Cider

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the raisins in a cask.

  2. Pour the cider over the raisins.

  3. Stir well for 2-3 days.

Age and finish

  1. Stop the cask and let it stand for 6 months.

  2. Rack the mixture into a cask that will fill it.

  3. Add the gallon of brandy.

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. Cider + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + cidertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together588 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Malaga raisins
Provide the sugar and fruit flavour that the wine is built from.
Cider
Supplies the liquid base and carries sugars from the raisins for fermentation.
Brandy
Adds alcohol that stabilises the wine and contributes warmth to its flavour.

The step that matters

Rack the mixture into a cask that will fill it. Filling the cask nearly to the top limits the air contact that lets vinegar-forming bacteria and oxidation spoil the wine during the long rest.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Currantfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, 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.

More raisin wine recipes

Malaga 6Cake 5Orange 3 See all 122 →

You might also like

Apple CiderApple Cider11 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes