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Drink

Damson Wine

A wine made by boiling damson fruit with water, then fermenting and sweetening with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Damson Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Gather the damson fruit and weigh it dry.

  2. Bruise the fruit with your hands and place it in an earthen container with a faucet, using a wad of straw before the faucet.

  3. Boil the water and pour it over the fruit while it's still scalding hot.

  4. Let the mixture stand for two days.

Age and bottle

  1. Draw off the liquid and transfer it to a clean cask.

  2. Add 2.5 pounds of sugar for every gallon of liquid and fill the cask.

  3. The longer it stands, the better it will be; it can keep well for a year in the cask.

  4. Afterward, bottle it off.

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

What each ingredient does

Damson fruit
Supplies the main flavour, colour and natural acidity of the wine.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and food for the yeast, which turns it into alcohol during standing.

“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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