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Drink

Ginger Wine

A fermented beverage made with water, sugar, lemon juice, lemon peels, ginger, raisins, and finings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the water and sugar together for 30 minutes, skimming frequently.

  2. Once cooled, add the juice of 2 lemons.

Make the ginger infusion

  1. In a separate pot, boil the lemon peels and ginger in 3 pints of water for 1 hour.

  2. Let the ginger mixture cool, then combine it with the sugar and lemon mixture in a cask.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add the raisins and 1/2 cup of finings, then seal the cask.

  2. Let it stand for 2 months before bottling.

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 + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Sugar
Provides the sweetness and the fuel that yeast turns into alcohol during fermentation.
Malaga raisins
Add fruit sugars and natural yeasts that help start and feed the fermentation.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and supports a clean-tasting fermentation.
White ginger
Contributes the aromatic, peppery flavour that defines the wine.

The step that matters

Cooling before combining. The ginger mixture and syrup must cool before they are combined in the cask, because hot liquid can harm the yeast and disrupt fermentation.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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