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Elder Flower White Wine

A fermented wine made from elder flowers, raisins, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and sugar 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 ↓

Elder Flower White Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the spring water and let it cool until it is warm.

  2. Add the chopped raisins, lemon juice, and peels, and elder flowers.

  3. Let the mixture stand for a fortnight, stirring daily.

Ferment and clarify

  1. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl with the powdered sugar and stir well.

  2. Seal the mixture and let it ferment for 5 to 6 weeks.

  3. If the wine is not clear, dissolve isinglass in a quart of wine and mix it in.

  4. Let it stand for another fortnight 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. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Malaga raisins
Provide sugars and body that feed fermentation and add fruity flavour.
Powdered loaf sugar
Supplies sugar for the yeast to ferment into alcohol, adding sweetness to the finished wine.
Dried elder flowers
Contribute the characteristic floral aroma of the wine.
Lemon juice and peels
Add acidity and bright citrus aroma that balance the sweetness.
Isinglass
Fining agent that helps settle haze so the wine clears.

The step that matters

Strain before sealing and fermenting. Straining through a fine sieve removes solids that would otherwise ferment unevenly and cloud the wine. Stirring the sugar in well ensures it dissolves evenly so fermentation starts uniformly throughout the batch.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar. 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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