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Drink

Clary-Wine

A fermented beverage made from water, sugar, egg whites, clary flowers, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Clary-Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a large pot, combine 5 gallons of water and 15 pounds of lump sugar.

  2. Beat the whites of 5 eggs and add them to the pot.

  3. Boil the mixture, skimming off any foam until it is clear.

  4. Set the mixture aside to cool.

Ferment and age

  1. Once cool, transfer it to a cask and add 2 gallons of clary flowers stripped from the stems.

  2. Add ¼ pint of good yeast and stir daily for 3-4 days.

  3. Afterward, seal the cask tightly.

  4. Optionally, add a pint of flowers in bloom 2-3 weeks later to enhance flavor.

  5. Let it sit in the barrel for about 4 months 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.

  1. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lump sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and sweetness in the finished wine.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the wine's fermentation.
Clary flowers
Supply the characteristic aroma and flavour of the wine.
Eggs
Egg whites are beaten into the boiling liquid, where they coagulate and collect impurities as a foam that is skimmed off, clarifying the liquid.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiled mixture. Foam that is not removed during boiling carries impurities and clouds the liquid. Skimming until it runs clear gives a cleaner, clearer wine.

“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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