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Drink

Clary Wine

A fermented beverage made from sugar, water, clary flowers, ale yeast, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Clary Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Boil the sugar in water, skimming constantly.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the clary flowers in a covered vessel.

  3. Let the infusion cool to the warmth of new milk.

Ferment

  1. Stir well and add a toast spread with ale yeast.

  2. Leave to ferment for 2 days.

  3. Transfer to a barrel with the clary flowers.

  4. When fermentation stops, seal and let it sit for 3 months.

Rack and finish

  1. Rack off into another cask, adding brandy.

  2. After 6 weeks, it can be bottled or consumed.

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).

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

Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and the food for the yeast to turn into alcohol.
Clary flowers
Supply the aroma and flavour that the wine takes on during infusion.
Ale yeast
Converts the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Brandy
Adds extra alcohol and strength to the finished wine.

The step that matters

Cooling the infusion before adding yeast. If the hot liquid is still too warm when the yeast goes in, the heat can kill or weaken the yeast, so fermentation may fail or stall. Cooling it to lukewarm, around the warmth of new milk, keeps the yeast alive.

“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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