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Drink

To Make Cider

A fermented apple beverage made by crushing apples, adding honey, egg whites, flour, yeast, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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To Make Cider

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

To Make Cider

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Harvest ripe apples that can be easily shaken from the tree.

  2. Bruise or grind the apples until they form a mash.

  3. Place the mash in a fine hair bag and squeeze out the juice gradually.

  4. Strain the juice through a fine sieve into a clean cask.

  5. Mash the leftover pulp with a little warm water and add a quarter of it back to the cider.

Ferment

  1. Mix honey, egg whites, and flour together, then place in a fine rag and hang it in the cider cask.

  2. Add 1 pint of warm new ale yeast to the cider.

  3. Let the mixture sit for 5 to 6 days to ferment.

Bottle and store

  1. After fermentation, transfer the cider into smaller casks or bottles, leaving 1 inch of space at the top.

  2. Check for fermentation pressure by listening for hissing sounds from the corks and open if necessary.

  3. In winter, keep the bottles warm; in summer, store them in a cool place.

  4. To preserve the cider's strength, add a small lump of loaf sugar 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Honey + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,932 recipes

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

  5. Honey + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Red-streaked pippins
Provide the juice and sugars that the fermentation turns into cider.
Golden pippins
Provide the juice and sugars that the fermentation turns into cider.
Honey
Adds sweetness and feeds the yeast during fermentation.
New ale yeast
Converts the sugars in the juice into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Egg whites
Hung in the cask in a rag, they help clarify the cider as it settles.
Loaf sugar
Added to each bottle to renew fermentation and build carbonation.

The step that matters

Leaving headspace and checking pressure in the bottles. Fermentation keeps producing carbon dioxide after bottling. Without headspace and periodic checks for hissing at the corks, bottles can build enough pressure to burst or blow their corks.

“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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