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Elderberry Wine

A fermented beverage made by boiling elderberries with water, spices, sugar, and tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Elderberry Wine

Why it works: Allspice and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Elderberry Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Boil the elderberries in water for 1 hour.

  2. Tie allspice and ginger in a piece of linen and add to the boiling mixture.

  3. Strain the boiling liquid over the sugar in a tub, pressing the fruit dry.

Finish

  1. Add the tartar to the strained liquid and mix well.

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. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  4. Allspice + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,938 recipes

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

  5. Ginger + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ginger and sugar 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 flavour, colour and body of the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and sets the wine's sweetness and alcohol level.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps keep the wine stable.
Ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma to the wine.
Allspice
Adds a warm, spicy aroma to the wine.

The step that matters

Pressing the fruit dry after straining. Squeezing the cooked elderberries releases more colour, tannin and flavour into the liquid, but over-pressing can pull in bitter, astringent compounds from the skins and seeds.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, sugar, cream. 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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