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Elder Blossom Wine

A fermented beverage made from elder blossoms, lemons, sugar, water, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Elder Blossom Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. In a stone jar, combine elder blossoms, sliced lemons, and white sugar.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture and let it cool.

  3. Once cool, add the yeast and stir gently.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Let the mixture stand for 2 days.

  2. Strain the liquid and bottle it, corking lightly.

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 + 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

Elder blossoms
Provide the floral aroma that defines the wine's character.
White sugar
Feeds the yeast, which converts it to alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol, driving the wine's fermentation.

The step that matters

Add the yeast only after the liquid has cooled. Yeast is killed or damaged by very hot liquid, so adding it to boiling water would stop fermentation before it starts. Waiting for the mixture to cool keeps the yeast alive to work on the sugar.

“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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