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Drink

Elder Blossom Wine

A fermented beverage made from elder blossoms, raisins, sugar, citrus, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Elder Blossom Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the elder blossoms and remove them from the stems.

  2. Boil the sugar and water together.

Make the wine

  1. Add the blossoms to the boiling mixture, then cool it and pour into a large stone jar.

  2. When the mixture is warm, stir in two cakes of yeast that have been soaked.

  3. Let it stand for 8 to 10 days, stirring morning and evening until the blossoms rise to the top.

  4. Strain the mixture through a cloth each time you stir.

  5. Add the seeded raisins and put into self-sealing cans without the rubbers.

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. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Sugar and lemon 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 flavour.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and provides sweetness and alcohol during fermentation.
Yeast (in the method)
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide to drive the wine.
Raisins
Add body, fruity sweetness and additional sugars for fermentation.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture through a cloth each time you stir. Straining removes blossom particles and debris that would otherwise sour, cloud or spoil the fermenting liquid, keeping the wine clearer and cleaner tasting.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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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