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Drink

Ginger Wine

A fermented beverage made from ginger, raisins, whiskey, lemon, and sugar, clarified with isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil water, sugar, and ginger for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove scum and let the liquid cool overnight.

Steep and strain

  1. Chop raisins and place them in a 12-gallon cask with whiskey and lemon slices.

  2. The next day, strain the cooled liquid into the cask, leaving sediment behind.

  3. Bung the cask immediately as there is no fermentation.

Fine and bottle

  1. After 2 weeks, mix in dissolved isinglass for fining.

  2. Bottle the wine after another 2 weeks.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Ginger + spirittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together88 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the wine.
Chopped raisins
Add sweetness and fruity flavour as they steep in the liquid.
Jamaica ginger
Gives the wine its warm, spicy aroma and bite.
Whiskey
Adds spirit strength and carries aroma from the fruit and ginger.
Lemons
Add acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness.
Isinglass
Collects suspended particles so the wine clears during fining.

The step that matters

Strain off the sediment before bunging the cask. Straining the cooled liquid and leaving sediment behind keeps solids out of the cask. Sediment left in the wine can cause cloudiness and off-flavours as it ages, and hot liquid can drive off delicate aromas.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, spirit, lemon. 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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