Name: Another Way to Make Ginger Wine
Ingredients: 3 gallons spirits (whisky or rum); 1 gallon Seville orange juice; ½ gallon lemon juice; 20 pounds loaf sugar; 1½ pounds best white ginger, bruised; ½ ounce isinglass; cold boiled water (to fill the cask)

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Another Way to Make Ginger Wine

Ingredients

3 gallons spirits (whisky or rum)
1 gallon Seville orange juice
½ gallon lemon juice
20 pounds loaf sugar
1½ pounds best white ginger, bruised
½ ounce isinglass
cold boiled water (to fill the cask)

Directions

Make the wine

In a ten-gallon cask, combine the spirits, Seville orange juice, lemon juice, loaf sugar, bruised ginger, and isinglass.
Fill the cask with cold boiled water.

Rest and bottle

Allow the mixture to sit for six 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.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,833 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,154 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Spirit + orangetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together171 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Spirit + gingertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together88 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Spirits: Whisky or rum provides the alcohol that preserves the wine and carries the flavour.
Loaf sugar: Sugar adds sweetness and body, balancing the acidity of the citrus juices.
Seville orange juice: Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma.
Lemon juice: Adds further acidity and a fresh, sharp citrus note.
White ginger: Supplies the spicy, warming aroma that defines the wine.
Isinglass: Acts as a fining agent that helps clear the wine as it rests.

Swap the lemon

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

Lemonthe original
Limefits about as well
Vanillafits about as well
Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against spirit, orange, sugar, ginger. 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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Another Way to Make Ginger Wine