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Malt Wine

A sweet wine made by boiling wort, adding sugar, raisins, isinglass, yeast, fermenting, then adding brandy and aging.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Wort and brandy work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18 recipes. Both carry phenethyl acetate, which smells rose, honey. The science ↓

Malt Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Boil the sweet wort with lump sugar for 30 minutes.

  2. When nearly cold, transfer it to a barrel.

Ferment

  1. Add chopped raisins, dissolved isinglass, and yeast.

  2. Stir the mixture daily for 2 to 4 weeks.

  3. Keep the bung lightly in until fermentation ceases.

Fortify and age

  1. After fermentation, add 1 gallon of brandy for every 16 gallons of liquor.

  2. Seal the cask and let it age for 12 months 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. Wort + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenethyl acetate (rose, honey).

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

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

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

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

  4. Wort + raisintop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Lump sugar
Adds sweetness and feeds the yeast, supplying fermentable sugar for alcohol.
Malaga raisins
Add body, sweetness and fruit flavour as they release sugars into the fermenting liquid.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the fermentation.
Isinglass
Acts as a fining agent that helps clear the wine by settling suspended particles.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and stabilises the finished wine.

The step that matters

Adding the brandy after fermentation. Brandy added before fermentation ends would halt the yeast early, leaving the wine sweeter and less fully fermented. Waiting until fermentation ceases lets the yeast finish converting sugar first.

“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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