Name: Spruce Wine
Ingredients: 1½ pounds honey; ½ pound fine starch; 5 gallons water; ¼ pound essence of spruce

Spruce Wine

Ingredients

1½ pounds honey
½ pound fine starch
5 gallons water
¼ pound essence of spruce

Directions

Make the mixture

Boil part of the water and mix with the starch to create a transparent jelly.
Blend the jelly with the honey and remaining water.
Add the essence of spruce.

Ferment and bottle

Let it ferment for 3-4 days.
Dissolve ¼ ounce of isinglass in warm liquid, then stir it in before bottling.
Bottle it.

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

What each ingredient does

Honey: Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and sweetness in the finished wine.
Fine starch: Cooked with water to form a clear jelly that thickens and gives body to the liquid.
Essence of spruce: Supplies the distinctive resinous aroma and flavour that defines this wine.

“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.