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Wines and Compounds

A fermented apple wine made with yeast, sugar, and Malaga raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,920 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Wines and Compounds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Hang apples by a string in the middle of a cask.

  2. Add 1 pint of good ale yeast and let it cleanse for 6 days.

  3. Press the apples after letting them sweat for 2 days in a heap.

Ferment

  1. Put the juice in a cask, leaving room for fermentation.

  2. Make a small hole near the bung-hole for venting.

  3. Add 2 pounds of sugar and 4 pounds of Malaga raisins.

  4. Rack it off and seal the cask with a small hole.

  5. Let it remain until ready to bottle, ideally in March or April.

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. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Ale yeast
Starts fermentation, converting the sugars in the juice into alcohol.
Sugar
Provides the fermentable sugar that feeds the yeast and adds sweetness.
Malaga raisins
Add concentrated sugar and fruit flavour to the fermenting wine.

The step that matters

Make a small hole near the bung-hole for venting. Fermentation releases carbon dioxide. Without a vent, pressure can build inside the cask and force the bung out or crack the vessel.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin. 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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