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English Wines

A fortified wine made with wine, egg whites, sugar, raisins, and spirits, clarified with isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Spirit and brandy work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 209 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells sweet. The science ↓

English Wines

Ingredients

Directions

Fine the wine

  1. Strain the wine through a flannel bag into a cask after two days.

  2. Beat the isinglass with the egg whites in a marble mortar for half an hour.

  3. Add the mixture to the wine and stir well.

Age and bottle

  1. Seal the cask and cover it with clay.

  2. Let it stand for six months.

  3. Bottle the wine, adding a lump of sugar and two raisins to each bottle.

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. Spirit + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (sweet).

  2. Wine + spirittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together701 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Their proteins bind to fine particles and pull them out of the wine, clearing it.
Isinglass
A fish-derived gelatin that helps the fining agent gather haze particles so they settle out.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness to each bottle and can restart a gentle fermentation for a light sparkle.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, egg, sugar, spirit, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, egg, sugar, spirit, 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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