Name: Raspberry Wine
Ingredients: 4 gallons ripe raspberries; 4 gallons water; 12 pounds sugar; 1 pint brandy

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 ↓

Raspberry Wine

Ingredients

4 gallons ripe raspberries
4 gallons water
12 pounds sugar
1 pint brandy

Directions

Prepare the juice

Mash the raspberries in a tub.
Add 4 gallons of water to the mashed fruit and let it stand for 24 hours.
Strain the mixture and press the fruit.
Add 12 pounds of sugar to the liquid and let it stand for 2-3 days.
Remove the scum and transfer the liquid to a fermentation vessel.

Ferment and age

Once fermentation is complete, add 1 pint of brandy for every 4 gallons of wine.
Seal the vessel and let it stand for 12 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.

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

Raspberries: Provide the fruit flavour and aroma that define the wine.
Sugar: Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and sweetness.
Brandy: Raises the alcohol content and stabilises the finished wine.

“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.