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Drink

Ginger Wine

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. In a large pot, combine water, sugar, bruised ginger, and beaten egg whites.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and let it boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Skim off any foam and allow the mixture to cool.

Ferment

  1. Once cool, pour it into an earthen vessel.

  2. Squeeze in the lemon juice and add the thin lemon rinds.

  3. Stir in the ale yeast and let it ferment for 24 hours.

  4. After fermentation, transfer the mixture into a cask.

  5. Hang it up and after two weeks, bottle the ginger wine.

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. 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

Sugar
Provides the sweetness and the sugar that the yeast ferments into alcohol.
Egg whites
Bind impurities that rise as foam, which are skimmed off to clarify the liquid.
Ale yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, making the wine.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and supports a clean fermentation.
Bruised ginger
Releases aromatic oils and pungent flavour into the water as it boils.

The step that matters

Skim off any foam and allow the mixture to cool. Egg whites coagulate and carry impurities to the surface as the mixture boils. Removing that foam clarifies the liquid. Cooling fully before adding yeast matters because hot liquid kills yeast and stops fermentation.

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.

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