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Drink

Ginger Wine

A fermented beverage made from ginger, citrus, sugar, raisins, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Slice the oranges and lemons thinly.

  2. Squeeze all the fruit and put the juice and peel into a tub.

Ferment

  1. Stir well at intervals for 2 to 3 days until the sugar is dissolved.

  2. Strain into a cask and add a little yeast.

  3. Do not stir again and ensure the cask is not quite full.

  4. In about a week, fill the cask and cork it.

  5. It will be ready in 3 to 4 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Orange + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Starts fermentation, converting the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, providing the sugar that becomes alcohol during fermentation.
Seville oranges
Provide acidity and aromatic citrus flavour from their juice and peel.

The step that matters

Keep the cask not quite full. Fermentation produces carbon dioxide and foam that need room to escape. A cask filled to the top can burst or push out liquid, so headspace is left until the fermentation has settled and the cask is topped up.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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