Skip to main content
Drink

Excellent Ginger Wine

A fermented beverage made from water, sugar, egg whites, ginger, and lemon rinds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Excellent Ginger Wine

Why it works: Ginger and lemon 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 ↓

Excellent Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Combine water, lump sugar, and beaten egg whites in a large pot, and mix well while cold.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and skim off any foam.

Flavor and boil

  1. Add bruised ginger and boil for 20 minutes.

  2. Prepare thin rinds of lemons to add to the mixture.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Lump sugar
Provides sweetness and the body that the finished wine is built on.
Egg whites
As they heat, they gather impurities into foam that can be skimmed off, clarifying the liquid.
Common white ginger
Contributes its sharp, warm aroma and spicy flavor to the wine.
Lemon rinds
Add aromatic citrus oils that brighten the flavor of the wine.

The step that matters

Skim off the foam as the mixture boils. Foam carries impurities from the egg whites and the mixture. Removing it while it forms keeps the wine clearer and stops bitter or off flavors from being stirred back in.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesGinger PopGinger Pop22 recipesGinger BeerGinger Beer11 recipes