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Elder Wine

A fermented elderberry beverage made with sugar, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Elder Wine

Why it works: Ginger and clove 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 ↓

Elder Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Boil the elderberries in 2 quarts of water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve and measure the juice.

Flavour and ferment

  1. Add ¾ pound of coarse sugar, Jamaica pepper, ginger, and cloves to the juice.

  2. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

  3. Pour it into a tub and let it cool to a warm temperature.

  4. Add toast and yeast to the tub to start fermentation.

Age the wine

  1. When bubbling stops, add 1 quart of brandy for every 8 gallons.

  2. Seal the container and let it sit until spring or Christmas.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Clove + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 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

Elderberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour of the wine.
Coarse sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
Yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and helps stabilise the wine once fermentation has stopped.

The step that matters

Cooling before adding yeast. Yeast works poorly or dies in very hot liquid, so the mixture should be only warm before fermentation starts. Adding yeast too early can stall the fermentation.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper, clove, brandy):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, clove, brandy. 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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