Name: Raspberry Wine
Ingredients: equal quantities of raspberries and water; 4 pounds coarse sugar; brandy

Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Raspberry Wine

Ingredients

equal quantities of raspberries and water
4 pounds coarse sugar
brandy

Directions

Make the wine

Bruise the raspberries and mix with water.
Let the mixture stand for two days.
Strain the mixture and add 4 pounds of coarse sugar for every gallon of liquid.
Once the sugar is dissolved, transfer the liquid to a barrel.

Bottle and finish

After about three months, when the wine is clear, bottle it.
Add a large spoonful of brandy to each bottle.

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.

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

Raspberries: Provide the flavour and aroma of the wine.
Coarse sugar: Feeds the fermentation and provides sweetness in the finished wine.
Brandy: Added to each bottle to strengthen the wine and preserve its flavour.

“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.