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Ginger Wine

A fermented beverage made from sugar, water, lemon, ginger, and yeast.

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

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar in spring water for 15 minutes, skimming constantly.

  2. When the mixture is cold, add the lemon juice.

Make the ginger infusion

  1. Boil the lemon peels and ginger in 3 pints of water for 1 hour.

  2. Let the ginger mixture cool, then combine it with the sugar and water mixture in a barrel.

Ferment

  1. Add the yeast 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.

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

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

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

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

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

Lisbon sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast converts to alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the fermentation of the wine.
Ginger
Adds its spicy, aromatic flavour to the wine during the hour-long boil.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and supports a clean fermentation.

The step that matters

Let the ginger mixture cool before combining it with the sugar mixture. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the sugar and water mixture must be cool before the yeast is added. Adding the hot mixture too early can stop fermentation.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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