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Drink

Laragossa Wine, or English Sack

A honeyed herbal wine made with water, rue, fennel roots, and honey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fennel and honey work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 99 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Laragossa Wine, or English Sack

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquid

  1. In a pot, combine 1 quart of water with 1 sprig of rue and 1 gallon of water with 1 handful of fennel roots.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes, then strain it.

Make the sack

  1. Add 3 pounds of honey to every gallon of the strained liquid.

  2. Boil the mixture for 2 hours, skimming off any foam.

  3. Once cooled, pour the liquid into a clean container.

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. Fennel + honeytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together99 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Honey
Provides the sweetness and fermentable sugar that give this drink its body.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam during the 2-hour boil. Foam carries impurities and proteins to the surface, and removing it keeps the finished liquid clearer and cleaner-tasting. Skimming must be done steadily as the mixture boils.

“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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