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Elderberry Wine

A fermented beverage made from elderberries, water, cloves, sugar, yeast, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Elderberry Wine

Why it works: Clove and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,182 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Elderberry Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Crush the elderberries.

  2. Add the water and clove essence.

  3. Simmer slowly for one hour.

  4. Strain the mixture over the sugar.

  5. Use 1 lb of sugar for each quart of liquid.

Ferment

  1. When the mixture is cold, add the toast with yeast on it.

  2. Allow to stand overnight.

  3. Remove the bread.

  4. Pour the liquid into a small cask.

  5. Allow it to ferment for two to three days, topping up the cask as it overflows.

  6. Place the bung lightly.

  7. When fermentation has stopped (about 3 weeks), drive in the bung.

Age

  1. Allow the wine to stand for 6 months.

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. Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

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

Clove and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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 natural sugars for the wine.
Granulated sugar
Feeds the yeast, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide, and adds sweetness.
Yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.

The step that matters

Place the bung lightly. While fermentation is active, carbon dioxide must escape from the cask, so the bung should not be sealed tight. Driving it in only after fermentation has stopped keeps air out of the finished wine.

“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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