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Valuable Receipt for Making Ginger Wine

A beverage made from water, sugar, ginger, lemon, and Seville orange.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Valuable Receipt for Making Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ginger liquor

  1. In a large pot, combine the water and lump sugar.

  2. Add the pounded ginger in a coarse linen bag.

  3. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes, skimming off any scum that rises.

  4. Once boiled, transfer the liquid to a tub.

  5. Allow it to cool to the warmth of new milk.

Finish

  1. Stir in the juice and rind of the lemons and Seville orange.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

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

  3. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Lump sugar
Provides sweetness and the body that the fermented wine will be built on.
Ginger
Contributes the spicy aroma and warm flavour that defines the drink.
Lemons
Add acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness.
Seville orange
Adds acidity and citrus aroma from its juice and rind.

The step that matters

Cooling to the warmth of new milk. Adding yeast or other cultures to liquid that is still hot can kill them, while a cool liquid may fail to start fermentation. Cooling to lukewarm keeps the fermentation active.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Peppermintfits less well
  4. Rosemaryfits less well

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