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Elder Wine

A fermented elderberry beverage flavored 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 1 quart of elderberries with 2 quarts of water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve to extract the juice.

  3. Add ¾ pound of coarse Lisbon sugar, Jamaica peppers, ginger, and cloves to the juice.

  4. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

Ferment and bottle

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

  2. Add toast and yeast to the mixture to start fermentation.

  3. When bubbling stops, add 1 quart of brandy for every 8 gallons of liquid.

  4. Seal the container and store in a warm place.

  5. 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. Clove + elderberrytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Ginger + elderberrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Elderberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and juice for the wine.
Coarse lisbon sugar
Supplies sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and adds sweetness.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the juice into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and stabilises the finished wine.

The step that matters

Let the liquid cool to a warm temperature before adding toast and yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must cool enough before fermentation starts. Warm, not hot, keeps the yeast active and fermentation steady.

Swap the elderberry

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Elderberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, ginger, 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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