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Incomparable Apricot Wine

A fermented wine made from apricots, sugar, water, and fortified with hock, mountain, or sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and sherry work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 173 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Incomparable Apricot Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the must

  1. Slice apricots and add them to spring water in a large pot.

  2. Stir in powdered sugar and boil without removing the scum.

  3. Skim off the scum as it rises and strain the mixture through a clean sieve into a pan.

  4. Pour the clear boiling liquid over the apricot kernels and stones in the pan.

  5. Stir well, cover tightly, and let it cool completely.

  6. Once cool, add yeast and mix thoroughly.

Ferment and age

  1. After 2-3 days, when settled, transfer to a cask to ferment.

  2. Once fermentation is complete, add a bottle of old hock, mountain, or sherry.

  3. Seal the cask and let it age for six months before bottling.

  4. Store the bottled wine for twelve months before serving.

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. Apricot + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe apricots
Provide the fruit flavour, aroma and natural sugars that the yeast ferments into wine.
Powdered loaf sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness and body to the finished wine.
Yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the fermentation.
Old hock, mountain, or sherry
Adds fortifying strength and extra depth of flavour to the finished wine.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum while boiling. Scum is made of proteins and impurities that rise to the surface as the liquid heats. Removing it as it forms keeps the must clear and prevents off flavours that would carry into the finished wine.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry. 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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