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Elder-berry Aa'ine

A fermented elderberry beverage made with sugar, ginger, cloves, allspice, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Elder-berry Aa'ine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Boil as many quarts of spring water as desired with 2 pounds of moist sugar for each quart.

  2. Add 1 ounce of ginger, ½ ounce of cloves, and ½ ounce of allspice tied in a muslin bag.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add equal quantities of pure elderberry juice and a toast covered with yeast.

Ferment and seal

  1. Allow it to sit for several days to ferment.

  2. Pour the mixture into a spirit or wine cask.

  3. Once fermentation has ceased, seal the cask tightly.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + elderberrytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  5. Ginger + elderberrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Moist sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and sweetness in the finished wine.
Elderberry juice
Supplies the fruit flavour and the sugars and nutrients that feed the fermentation.
Yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma to the wine.

The step that matters

Seal the cask once fermentation has ceased. Sealing too early can trap carbon dioxide built up by active yeast and cause pressure, while sealing too late exposes the wine to air, which lets oxygen encourage spoilage. Waiting until fermentation has stopped and then sealing tightly keeps the wine stable.

Swap the elderberry

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Elderberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, clove, allspice. 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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