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Elder Wine

A fermented elderberry beverage made with water, sugar, spices, toast, yeast, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Elder Wine

Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Elder Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Boil the elderberries in 2 quarts of water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquid and mash the fruit through a fine sieve.

  3. Add ¾ pound of coarse sugar, Jamaica pepper, ginger, and cloves to the juice.

  4. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

Ferment and age

  1. Pour it into a tub and let it cool to a warm temperature.

  2. Add toast and yeast to the tub to start fermentation.

  3. When bubbling stops, add 1 quart of brandy for every 8 gallons.

  4. Seal the container and let it sit for several weeks before bottling.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Clove + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

Elderberries
Provide the main fruit flavor and color of the wine.
Coarse sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
Yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and stabilizes the wine once fermentation has stopped.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool to a warm temperature before adding yeast. Yeast is damaged by very hot liquid, so it must be cooled before adding it. If it is still hot, fermentation may fail to start.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, clove, brandy. 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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