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Wine Making

A method for producing wine from berries using sugar, cloves, ginger, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger 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 ↓

Wine Making

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Strain the juice from the fruit through a sieve or cloth.

  2. Squeeze the remaining juice from the berries and mix it with the strained juice.

Make the mixture

  1. Measure the total juice and add 3 pounds of sugar, ¾ ounce of cloves, and 1 ounce of ginger for every gallon.

  2. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes, skimming thoroughly.

Ferment

  1. When slightly warmer than milk, pour it into a clean, dry cask or large stone bottles.

  2. Fill the container completely and add a large spoonful of new yeast, stirring it into the liquid.

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. Clove + gingertop 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 juice that forms the base of the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and provides sweetness and alcohol.
New yeast
Ferments the sugars in the juice into alcohol.

The step that matters

Fill the container completely. Filling the cask to the top leaves little air above the liquid, which limits oxidation and the growth of spoilage microbes while fermentation proceeds.

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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