Skip to main content
Drink

Turnip Wine

A fermented beverage made from turnip juice, sugar, brandy, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Turnip Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pare and slice the desired quantity of turnips.

  2. Squeeze out the juice using a cider press.

Ferment

  1. For every gallon of juice, add 3 pounds of lump sugar and ½ pint of brandy.

  2. Place the mixture in a vessel just large enough to hold it.

  3. Cover the vessel for a week.

  4. Once fermentation is complete, seal the vessel tightly.

Age and bottle

  1. Let it stand for three months.

  2. Transfer the wine to another vessel.

  3. Bottle it when clear.

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 + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  2. Turnip + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Turnip + brandytop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Turnips
Provide the juice that ferments into the wine and supply the base flavour.
Lump sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbonation.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and helps preserve the finished wine.
Yeast
Converts the sugars in the juice into alcohol during fermentation.

The step that matters

Sealing the vessel after fermentation. Sealing too early can trap gas and stop fermentation, while sealing too late exposes the wine to air. Seal once bubbling has finished so the wine stays stable and clear.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes