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Home-made Wines

A method for making wine from fruit juice, sugar, egg whites, yeast, and optional flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,329 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Home-made Wines

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Strain the juice through a flannel bag and boil it.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in the juice and let it cool slightly.

  3. Stir in the egg whites and boil gently for 15 minutes, removing froth as it rises.

Ferment and flavor

  1. Let it cool, then pour gently into a cask without disturbing the settlings.

  2. Add enough yeast to ferment the mixture.

  3. When fermentation declines, tie flavoring ingredients in a muslin bag and suspend it in the cask, tasting frequently.

  4. When the wine is pleasantly flavored, remove the bag.

  5. Once fermentation ceases, add 1 pint of white wine for each gallon of liquor and close the cask.

Rest

  1. After 3 months, the wine will be ready for use.

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. White wine + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,329 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

  3. Sugar + white winetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

  4. Egg + white winetop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Sugar + macetop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,096 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Juice
Forms the liquid base that yeast ferments into wine.
Loaf sugar
Feeds the yeast, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Egg whites
Bind impurities into froth during boiling, which is then skimmed off to clarify the liquid.
Yeast
Converts the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving fermentation.
White wine
Adds extra wine character and body once fermentation has finished.

The step that matters

Boiling with egg whites and skimming the froth. Egg whites coagulate as they heat and carry suspended particles to the surface. Skimming removes them, so the wine clears instead of staying cloudy and off-tasting.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, white wine. 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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