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Drink

Eider Wine

A fermented beverage made from elderberries, damsons, water, sugar, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, and hops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Eider Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Boil elderberries and damsons in water until the damsons burst, breaking them with a flat stick.

  2. Strain the mixture, then return the liquid to the pot.

  3. If the liquid is short of 20 gallons, add water to the pulp.

  4. Rub the pulp, then strain the pulp into the rest.

Boil and cool

  1. Boil for 2 hours with sugar, ginger, allspice, cinnamon bag, and hops.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

Ferment and age

  1. Turn the mixture in 2 days.

  2. Drop in the spice bag and suspend it with a string above the bottom of the cask.

  3. Seal with stiff brown paper after 2 weeks.

  4. Wait until the wine is ready to tap in 2 months.

  5. Store the wine for years.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Elderberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and body of the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness and alcohol.
Damsons or sloes
Add extra tartness and fruit flavour to balance the wine.
Hops
Add bitterness that helps balance the sweetness and preserve the wine.

The step that matters

Breaking down the damsons while boiling. Boiling until the damsons burst releases their juice, colour and acidity into the liquid. If they stay whole, less flavour and colour are extracted into the wine.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, cinnamon, hops. 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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