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Red or White Elder Wine

A fermented elderberry beverage made with water, sugar, egg whites, and yeast, aged for months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Red or White Elder Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Gather elderberries.

  2. Dry the elderberries.

  3. Bruise the elderberries.

  4. Strain the juice.

  5. Let the juice settle in glazed earthen vessels for 12 hours.

Make the must

  1. Add 1½ cups of water for every pint of juice.

  2. Add 3 pounds of sugar for every gallon of liquor.

  3. Heat the mixture in a kettle until boiling.

  4. Clarify the mixture with the egg whites.

  5. Boil for 1 hour.

  6. Let the mixture cool.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add strong ale-yeast.

  2. Fill the vessels as the liquid sinks over the next month.

  3. Bottle the wine after a month.

  4. Let the wine mature for 12 months.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

  3. Egg + winetop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

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

What each ingredient does

Elderberries
Provide the main flavor and color of the wine.
Lisbon sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and alcohol during fermentation.
Whites of 4 or 5 eggs
Bind to impurities as they heat, clarifying the wine so it runs clear.
Strong ale-yeast
Converts the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.

The step that matters

Clarify the mixture with the egg whites. Egg white proteins coagulate as the liquid heats and trap suspended particles, which rise and can be skimmed off. Adding them too late or skipping the heating leaves the wine cloudy.

“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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