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Drink

Ginger Wine

A fermented beverage made from ginger, citrus, sugar, and whisky.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger 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

Prepare the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and bruised ginger with the water for 30 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture stand until the next day.

  3. After a night, pour the clear part of the boiled liquid over the fruit mixture, leaving the sediment behind.

Make the wine

  1. Pare the fruit very thin and add the strained juice and half the peel to a cask.

  2. Pour in 2.5 gallons of whisky or other spirit.

  3. To improve the color, dilute 1 tablespoon of burnt sugar with a portion of the liquor before filling the cask.

  4. Bung the cask immediately and let it sit for two weeks.

Finish

  1. After two weeks, fine the mixture and then bottle it.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Ginger + whiskytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bitter orange + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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 sweetness and body, and feeds the fermentation or aging balance in the finished drink.
Bitter oranges
Adds acidity and aromatic bitterness from the juice and peel.
Lemons
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavor from the juice.
Ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma and flavor.
Whisky or other spirit
Adds alcohol, which preserves the wine and carries the fruit and ginger aromas.

The step that matters

Bung the cask immediately. Leaving the cask open lets air and contaminating microbes reach the liquid, which can spoil the wine or let it oxidize. Sealing it straight after filling keeps the mixture protected while it rests.

Swap the bitter orange

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Bitter orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, ginger, whisky. 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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