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Ginger-Wine

A fermented ginger wine made with sugar, water, ginger, citrus rinds, brandy, and yeast, aged for months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Ginger-Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Boil ginger in a muslin bag with water and sugar.

  2. Add the orange and lemon rind after scumming.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes after adding the peel.

  4. Cool the mixture in a tub.

Ferment and age

  1. Add lemon and orange juice, and brandy to the barrel.

  2. Let it stand for 4 months, adding yeast.

  3. Optionally, add raisins to the barrel.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

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

Moist sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and sweetness in the finished wine.
Ginger
Supplies the spicy, aromatic flavour that defines the wine.
Yeast
Converts sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide during the long standing period.
Brandy
Raises the final alcohol content and helps preserve the wine.
Lemons
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the boiled mixture must cool sufficiently before the yeast is added to start fermentation reliably.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, lemon, 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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