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Excellent Ginger Wine

A fermented beverage made from water, sugar, egg whites, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Excellent Ginger Wine

Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Excellent Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a large boiler, combine water and lump sugar.

  2. Add the beaten egg whites and mix well while cold.

Boil with ginger

  1. Bring the mixture to a boil and skim off any foam.

  2. Add the bruised ginger and boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Proceed with further steps as needed for fermentation and 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + gingertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,337 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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

Lump sugar
Provides sweetness and the sugar that yeast later ferments into alcohol.
Eggs
Egg whites bind fine impurities so they rise as foam that can be skimmed off, clarifying the liquid.
Common white ginger
Supplies the spicy, aromatic flavor that defines the wine.

The step that matters

Skim off the foam when the mixture boils. As the egg whites heat, they coagulate and carry impurities to the surface as foam. Removing that foam keeps the finished wine clearer and cleaner-tasting, so skim thoroughly rather than leaving it to stir back in.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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