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Home-made Wines

A homemade wine made from raisins, sugar, yeast, brandy, and almonds, fermented and aged for over a year.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Home-made Wines

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Boil sugar with soft water for 45 minutes and skim the mixture well.

  2. Pour hot syrup over the raisins in a tub and stir the mixture well.

  3. Add yeast and cover.

  4. Let sit for 3 days.

  5. Strain the liquid.

Ferment and clear

  1. Filter it into a cask, filling to the bung, and allow fermentation to complete.

  2. Add sugar-candy and brandy, then seal the cask.

  3. Let it sit for 1 month.

  4. Rack off the wine and filter the lees.

  5. Return to the cask with dissolved isinglass and almonds, then secure the bung.

Age and bottle

  1. Let the wine age for 18 months.

  2. Bottle the wine and seal the corks.

  3. Store for an additional year.

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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Brandy + almondtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Smyrna raisins
Provide the fruit base and natural sugars that yeast ferments into alcohol.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide, and adds sweetness.
Strong yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
French brandy
Raises the alcohol content and helps stabilize the finished wine.
Isinglass
Fining agent that helps clarify the wine by binding suspended particles for settling.

The step that matters

Filter the lees before returning to the cask. Leaving spent yeast and debris in the wine can cause off-flavors and renewed fermentation, so clearing them before aging keeps the wine clean.

“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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