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Drink

Parsnip Wine

A fermented beverage made from parsnips, ginger, sugar, water, citrus juices, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Parsnip Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquid

  1. Wash the parsnips and cut them into slices.

  2. Place the parsnips and ginger in a pan with half the water and boil until tender.

  3. Strain the mixture over the sugar.

  4. Add the remaining water and the fruit juices.

  5. Leave the mixture overnight.

Ferment

  1. Add a piece of toast with yeast on it and leave until the next day.

  2. Remove the toast and skim the liquid.

  3. Pour the liquid into a cask and fill it up as it runs over.

  4. When the liquid is still, bung it tightly down.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Parsnip + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Parsnip + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together172 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Parsnips
Provide the main flavour and body of the wine once boiled until tender.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and provides sweetness and alcohol.
Yeast
Converts the sugars in the liquid into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Ginger
Adds aroma and a warm, spicy flavour to the wine.

The step that matters

Fill the cask as it runs over. Keeping the cask topped up keeps air out of the liquid, so the surface does not spoil while fermentation gives off gas and pushes foam out.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, sugar, ginger. 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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