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Frontigniac Wine

A fermented wine made from sun raisins, sugar, elder-flowers, lemon juice, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Frontigniac Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Boil water, sun raisins, and sugar for 1 hour.

  2. Add elder-flowers when the mixture cools.

  3. The next day, stir in lemon juice and yeast.

Ferment and bottle

  1. On the third day, transfer to a clean cask and seal it.

  2. Bottle the wine after it has stood for 2 months.

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. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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
Feeds the yeast and provides sweetness, which becomes alcohol during fermentation.
Sun raisins
Supply fermentable sugars, body, and fruity flavor to the wine.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and balances the sweetness.
Elder-flowers
Contribute a floral aroma and flavor to the finished wine.

The step that matters

Bottle the wine after it has stood for 2 months. Fermentation must finish before bottling. If sugar is still converting when the wine is sealed in bottles, carbon dioxide builds up and can burst them.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar. 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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