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English Sherry or Malt Wine

A homemade English wine made from sugar, water, hops, strong beer, and raisins, finished with bitter almonds and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

English Sherry or Malt Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Boil sugar and water together for 2 hours, skimming carefully while boiling.

  2. Add hops and boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Cool the mixture.

Ferment

  1. Add strong beer.

  2. Cover and let it work for 48 hours.

  3. Skim and transfer to another container.

  4. In 2-3 weeks, when the head sinks, add raisins.

Finish and bottle

  1. Mix sugar candy and bitter almonds with brandy.

  2. Bottle after 1 year or leave for 3 years for better flavor.

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. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Beer + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Almond + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Moist sugar
Provides the fermentable sugar that feeds the yeast and becomes the wine's alcohol.
Strong beer
Supplies yeast to start fermentation and adds malt character to the wine.
Hops
Adds bitterness that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the wine.
Sugar candy
Adds extra sweetness and body to the finished wine.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and adds warmth and stability.
Bitter almonds
Adds a nutty, aromatic flavour to the finished wine.

The step that matters

Skim carefully while boiling. Skimming removes foam and impurities that can spoil flavour and clarity. Boiling the sugar and water long enough also sterilises the liquid before the beer is added, so unwanted microbes do not compete with the fermentation.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, hops, beer, almond, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, hops, beer, almond, brandy. 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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