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Elder Wine

A fermented elderflower beverage made with water, sugar, cloves, toast, yeast, and brandy.

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

Why it works: Brandy and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,362 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Elder Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Boil 2 quarts of water for half an hour.

  2. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve to remove the elder flowers.

  3. Add ½ pound of sugar and a few cloves to the juice.

  4. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

Ferment and bottle

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

  2. Add toast and yeast to help it ferment.

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

  4. Seal the container and bottle in the spring.

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. Brandy + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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 during fermentation and provides the wine's sweetness.
Yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, which causes the hissing.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and helps preserve the finished wine.
Elder flowers
Provide the floral aroma and flavour that define the wine.
Water
Forms the liquid base that carries the other flavours and sugars.

The step that matters

Add the brandy only when the hissing stops. Yeast is active while the mixture hisses. Adding strong alcohol too early would kill or slow the yeast, so fermentation would stall before the sugars were converted.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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