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Drink

English Sherry

A fortified wine made by boiling sugar and water, adding ale-wort, fermenting, and aging with raisins, brandy, and isinglass.

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 ↓

English Sherry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the wort

  1. Boil sugar and water for 30 minutes, skimming off any scum.

  2. When cold, add 1 quart of new ale-wort for each gallon of water.

  3. Let it ferment in a tub for 1-2 days.

Cask and age

  1. Transfer to a cask and add sugar-candy, sun-raisins, brandy, and isinglass.

  2. Once fermentation is complete, seal the cask and let it stand for 8 months.

  3. Rack off the liquid and add more brandy if needed.

  4. Return to the cask and let it stand for 4 months before bottling.

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 base that yeast converts into alcohol, and sweetness in the finished wine.
New ale-wort
Supplies yeast and fermentable material to start the fermentation.
Sun-raisins
Add fruit sugar, body and flavour to the liquid during the cask stage.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and stabilises the sherry style.
Isinglass
Fines the liquid, helping it clear as it settles in the cask.

The step that matters

Skimming while boiling the sugar and water. Scum left on the surface can carry impurities and off-flavours into the liquid, so it should be removed during the 30-minute boil.

“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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