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Drink

Nettle Wine

A fermented beverage made from nettle tops, sugar, yeast, and fruit, boiled and aged.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Nettle Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liquor

  1. Boil the water with the sugar.

  2. Add the beaten egg whites and boil for an hour, skimming frequently.

Steep the nettles

  1. Bruise the nettle tops and place them in a bowl.

  2. Pour the hot liquid over the nettles, cover with a weighted cloth, and let cool.

  3. Add the yeast and stir well for three days.

Cask and finish

  1. Strain the liquid into a prepared cask with cream of tartar, raisins, lemon rinds, and sugar candy.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 sugar the yeast ferments into alcohol, and sweetness in the finished wine.
Egg whites
Bind and lift impurities during boiling, which are skimmed off to clarify the liquor.
Nettle tops
Supply the leafy flavour and body that define the wine.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps keep the wine stable and balanced.
Raisins
Add fermentable sugar, body and fruity flavour.

The step that matters

Skimming while boiling the liquor. Egg whites coagulate as they heat and carry impurities to the surface. Skimming them frequently removes that foam, leaving a clearer liquor with a cleaner flavour.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, cream, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, cream, raisin. 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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