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Elder Flower White Wine

A fermented white wine made with elder flowers, raisins, lemon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Elder Flower White Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the must

  1. Boil the spring water and let it cool to blood warm.

  2. Add the chopped raisins, lemon juice, and peels, and elder flowers.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 2 weeks, stirring daily.

Ferment and clarify

  1. Strain through a fine sieve into a bowl with the powdered sugar and stir to assist fermentation.

  2. Seal tightly and let it sit for 5-6 weeks.

  3. If not clear, dissolve isinglass in a quart of wine, add to the mixture, and let it stand for another 2 weeks before bottling.

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

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

  2. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Malaga raisins
Provide sugars and body that feed fermentation and add fruit flavour.
Powdered loaf sugar
Supplies sugar for yeast to ferment into alcohol, setting the wine's strength and sweetness.
Dried elder flowers
Contribute the characteristic floral aroma of the wine.
Lemon juice and peels
Add acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness.
Isinglass
Fining agent that binds haze particles so they settle, clearing the wine.

The step that matters

Sealing and the long rest. Sealing tightly holds in the carbon dioxide and keeps air out while fermentation finishes. Letting the wine rest undisturbed for weeks lets yeast finish and haze settle, so bottling too early can leave a cloudy or fizzy wine.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar. 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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