Name: Raisin Wine
Ingredients: 100 pounds Malaga raisins; 20 gallons water; 2½ pints sugar

Why it works: Raisin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Raisin Wine

Ingredients

100 pounds Malaga raisins
20 gallons water
2½ pints sugar

Directions

Prepare

Cut the raisins slightly.
Put the raisins into a cask.

Ferment

Add the water and sugar to the cask.
Stir well to combine.
Seal the cask and let it ferment.

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.

Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Malaga raisins: Provide sugar, flavor, and fruit solids that feed fermentation and give the wine body.
Sugar: Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and adding sweetness to the finished wine.

“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.