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Frontiniac Wine

A sweet wine made from sugar, raisins, elderflowers, lemon syrup, and ale yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Frontiniac Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Boil the sugar, raisins, and water for one hour.

  2. Add the elderflowers to the mixture when it is almost cold.

  3. The next day, stir in the lemon syrup and ale yeast.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Let the mixture stand for two days.

  2. Transfer it to a barrel that can hold the liquid.

  3. After two 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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Raisin + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

White sugar
Provides sweetness and the sugar that the yeast turns into alcohol.
Sun-dried raisins
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and flavor to the wine.
Elderflowers
Add a delicate floral aroma to the finished wine.
Lemon syrup
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavor that balances the sweetness.
Ale yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

The step that matters

Add the elderflowers when the mixture is almost cold. Heat drives off volatile aroma compounds, so adding the flowers to hot liquid would lose much of their floral scent. Waiting for the mixture to cool also keeps the flowers from being cooked in the boil.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, syrup. 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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