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Drink

White Elder Wine

A fermented beverage made from elderflowers, sugar, water, egg whites, lemon juice, yeast, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

White Elder Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liquor

  1. Boil the sugar in water with the egg whites until dissolved.

  2. Skim the mixture and add the elderflowers; do not keep on the fire.

Ferment and bottle

  1. When nearly cool, stir in the lemon juice and yeast.

  2. Stir the mixture daily and add the stoned raisins.

  3. Stop the cask tightly and bottle the wine after six months.

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 + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

White sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Egg whites
Bind to impurities when boiled so they can be skimmed off, clarifying the liquid.
Elderflowers
Supply the characteristic floral aroma and flavour of the wine.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and supports a clean fermentation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol, driving the wine's fermentation.
Stoned raisins
Add body, sweetness and additional fermentable sugars to the wine.

The step that matters

Keep the mixture off the fire after adding the elderflowers. Boiling delicate elderflowers drives off their volatile aroma compounds and can make the flavour harsh, so they should be added once the liquid is removed from heat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, raisin. 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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