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Home-made Wines

A traditional method for making wine from juice, sugar, egg whites, yeast, and optional flavorings, then aged for three months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,329 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Home-made Wines

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Strain the juice through a flannel bag and boil it.

  2. Dissolve 1.5 pounds of sugar in the juice.

  3. Let the mixture cool slightly, then stir in the egg whites.

  4. Boil gently for 15 minutes, removing froth as it rises.

Ferment and flavour

  1. Let it cool, then pour gently into a cask without disturbing the settlements.

  2. Add enough yeast to ferment the mixture.

  3. When fermentation declines, tie flavouring ingredients in a muslin bag and suspend it in the cask.

  4. Taste frequently and remove the bag when the wine is pleasantly flavoured.

Finish and age

  1. When fermentation ceases, add 1 pint of white wine for each gallon of liquor.

  2. Close the cask and let it sit for three months before use.

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. White wine + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,329 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

  3. Sugar + white winetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

  4. Egg + white winetop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Sugar + macetop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,096 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Juice
Forms the bulk of the liquid and supplies the fruit sugars and flavour for fermentation.
Loaf sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Egg whites
Bind to impurities as they are heated, so the froth can be skimmed off and the wine clarified.
Yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the fermentation.
White wine
Added after fermentation ceases to boost the alcohol and body of the finished wine.

The step that matters

Pour without disturbing the settlements. Sediment that has settled after boiling and clarifying would cloud the wine and can add off-flavours if stirred back in. Pouring gently leaves it behind in the cask.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, white wine. 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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