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Drink

Hlder-Wine

A fermented beverage made from berries, juice, water, sugar, ginger, cloves, yeast, and toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hlder-Wine

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Put the berries into a pot or jar and let them stand overnight in a cool oven.

  2. Mix 1 quart of juice with 3 quarts of water.

  3. Add 3.5 pounds of sugar, a little ginger, and a little cloves.

  4. Boil for 45 minutes.

Ferment and cask

  1. When cool, work in yeast and spread on toast.

  2. Let it work for 24 hours.

  3. Put it into a cask and lightly place the bung until fermentation is complete.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Berries
Provide the fruit flavour and natural sugars that the yeast ferments into alcohol.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide, and adds sweetness to the wine.
Yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the boiled liquid must be cool before the yeast is worked in or fermentation will fail.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger. 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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