Name: To Make Mulberry Wine
Ingredients: 4 quarts ripe mulberries; 4 quarts water; 12 pounds sugar; 2 pennies worth isinglass; a little wine

Why it works: Sugar and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 31% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,581 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Make Mulberry Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the berries

Beat the mulberries in a marble mortar.
Combine 1 quart of berries with 1 quart of water in a tub.
Rub well with your hands.
Let the mixture stand overnight.
Strain through a sieve.

Make the wine

Dissolve 3 pounds of sugar in every gallon of water.
Add to the barrel.
Chop the isinglass into pieces.
Mix with a little wine.
Let it sit near the fire overnight.

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.

Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together9,581 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

Ripe mulberries: Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and juice for the wine.
Sugar: Feeds the fermentation and provides sweetness to balance the fruit's tartness.
Isinglass: Fines the wine, helping suspended particles settle so it clears.

“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.