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Balm Wine

A herbal wine made by boiling sugar, water, balm, lemon, and yeast, then aging for months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Balm Wine

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Balm Wine

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the sugar in the water. Skim the mixture clean.

  2. Add the balm and boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and cool it.

  4. Add yeast and let it stand for 2 days.

  5. Add the rind and juice of the lemon.

  6. Transfer to a barrel and let it stand for 6 months.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sugar
Feeds the yeast, which converts it to alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol, driving the conversion of this sweet liquid into wine.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness to balance the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Add yeast and let it stand for 2 days. Yeast must be added to a cooled liquid; heat can kill it. Cooling after straining makes sure the yeast can start fermenting the sugar properly.

“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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