Why it works: Clove and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓
Birch Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Collect the juice
Bore a hole in a birch tree, one foot from the ground, and insert a faucet to collect the juice for 2-3 days.
Stop the hole with a peg for future use.
Make the wine
Combine the juice with honey or sugar, and stir well.
Boil the mixture for 1 hour, skimming continuously, and add cloves and lemon peel.
When nearly cool, add enough yeast to make it work like ale.
Once it begins to settle, pour the liquor into a cask.
For every 20 gallons, add 1½ cups of finings and the whites and shells of 4 eggs, stir briskly, and let it stand for 6 weeks or longer.
Bottle it off, and it will be ready to use in 2 months, improving with time.
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.
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Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,150 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Honey + clovetop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together736 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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Honey + lemontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,707 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together44,316 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Honey + eggtop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,150 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
- Birch tree juice
- Provides the base liquid and the sugars that yeast ferments into alcohol.
- Honey or sugar
- Supplies the fermentable sugar that yeast converts, setting the strength and sweetness of the wine.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the fermentation.
- Eggs
- Their whites and shells help fining, clearing suspended particles so the wine becomes clear.
The step that matters
Adding the yeast when nearly cool. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to liquid that is still hot can stop fermentation. Waiting until the mixture is nearly cool lets the yeast start working reliably.
Swap the clove
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (honey, lemon, egg):
- Dillfits better
- Thymefits better
- Parsleyfits better
- Clovethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against honey, lemon, egg. 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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