Skip to main content
Drink

Damson Wine

A wine made from damsons, boiled water, sugar, and French brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Damson Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stalks from the damsons.

  2. Place the damsons in an earthenware bowl.

  3. Pour boiling water over the damsons.

Strain and sweeten

  1. After the mixture cools, strain the liquid.

  2. Add 4 lbs of loaf sugar to the strained liquid.

  3. Stir in ½ pint of French brandy.

Bottle and mature

  1. Bottle the wine and let it mature.

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. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Damsons
Provide the fruit flavour, colour and acidity that define the wine.
Boiling water
Extracts juice and flavour from the damsons into the liquid.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the fruit's tartness.
French brandy
Adds alcohol and aroma, strengthening the wine and rounding its flavour.

“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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes