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Incomparable Apricot Wine

A fermented apricot wine made by boiling apricots with sugar, water, and wine, then fermenting for months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and sherry work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 173 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Incomparable Apricot Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Slice the apricots and add them to the spring water.

  2. Stir in the powdered sugar.

  3. Boil without removing the scum.

  4. Skim off the scum as it rises.

  5. Strain the mixture through a clean sieve.

  6. Pour the clear liquid over the apricot kernels and stones in a pan. Stir well.

  7. Cover and let it cool completely.

  8. Add yeast.

Ferment and age

  1. Let it sit for 2-3 days until settled.

  2. Transfer to a cask to ferment.

  3. Add the bottle of wine.

  4. Seal 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.

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. Apricot + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Supply the fruit flavour, aroma and natural sugars that the yeast ferments.
Powdered loaf sugar
Provides the sugar the yeast converts to alcohol, and sweetness in the finished wine.
Yeast (in the method)
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Old hock, mountain, or sherry
Adds extra alcohol, body and wine character to the finished drink.

The step that matters

Let the liquid cool completely before adding yeast. Yeast is killed or stressed by hot liquid. Cooling fully before pitching keeps the yeast alive so fermentation starts reliably and evenly.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry. 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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