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Drink

Malt Wine

A fermented beverage made from water, sugar, sweet wort, tun, raisins, candy, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wort and brandy work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18 recipes. Both carry phenethyl acetate, which smells rose, honey. The science ↓

Malt Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Boil the sugar and water together for 10 minutes.

  2. Skim the mixture well and pour it into a convenient-sized pan or tub.

  3. Allow it to cool, then mix it with the sweet wort and tun.

  4. Let the preparation stand for 3 days.

Ferment and age

  1. Transfer it into a barrel and let it ferment for another 3 days or more.

  2. Bung up the cask and keep it undisturbed for 2 to 3 months.

  3. After this, add the whole raisins, candy, and brandy.

  4. In 6 months, bottle the wine.

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. Wort + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenethyl acetate (rose, honey).

  2. Raisin + brandytop 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. Wort + raisintop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16 recipes

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

  5. 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

Sugar
Provides the fermentable sugar that yeast converts to alcohol, and sweetness in the finished wine.
Sweet wort
Supplies malt sugars and nutrients that feed the fermentation.
Raisins
Add body, fruity flavour and some residual sweetness to the finished wine.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and helps keep the finished wine stable.

The step that matters

Cooling before mixing. The sugar syrup must cool before it is mixed with the wort and tun. Hot liquid can kill yeast and other microbes needed for fermentation, so the ferment may stall or fail.

“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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