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Damson Wine

A wine made by boiling damsons with water and sugar, then fermenting and aging.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Damson Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wine

  1. Boil damsons in water and stir until cold.

  2. Strain through a sieve without pressing the damsons.

  3. Add 10.5 pounds of sugar for every gallon of liquid.

  4. Transfer to a cask and seal tightly once fermentation is complete.

Age and bottle

  1. Let it stand for at least 6 months, longer if desired.

  2. When bottling, add 1 tablespoon of brandy to each bottle.

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 + 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

Damsons
Provide the fruit flavour, colour, and acidity that define the wine.
Lump sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness to balance the fruit's acidity.
Brandy
Added at bottling to raise the alcohol content and add warmth to the finished wine.

The step that matters

Strain without pressing the damsons. Pressing the fruit forces out extra pulp, solids and bitter tannins from the skins and stones, which can make the wine cloudy, astringent and harder to clear.

“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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