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Vert Good Ginger Wine

A fermented ginger wine made with water, sugar, ginger, lemon, raisins, yeast, isinglass, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon 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 ↓

Vert Good Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Boil water, sugar, ginger, and lemon rinds for 30 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture cool to milk-warm.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a clean, dry cask.

Ferment

  1. Add lemon juice, raisins, and yeast.

  2. Stir daily for 10 days.

  3. When fermentation stops, add isinglass and brandy.

  4. Seal the cask tightly.

Bottle

  1. After 2 months, bottle the wine.

  2. If too sweet, let it remain in the cask longer.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and provides the wine's sweetness and body.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the fermentation.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Sun raisins
Contribute sugars and fruit flavor that feed the fermentation.
Isinglass
Fining agent that helps clear the wine by settling suspended particles.

The step that matters

When fermentation stops, add isinglass and brandy.. Adding isinglass too early can interfere with fermentation, while adding it after activity has ended lets it settle yeast and haze. Brandy added at this point raises alcohol and stabilizes the wine against further fermentation.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, raisin, brandy. 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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