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 ↓
Clary Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the must
Boil 15 gallons of water with 45 pounds of sugar and skim it.
When cool, mix a little of the water with ¼ pint of yeast.
Gradually add more yeast.
After an hour, pour the yeast mixture into the large pot of water.
Add the clary flowers, picked dry, to the mixture.
When it stops hissing and all flowers are added, seal it for 4 months.
Rack and finish
After 4 months, rack it off.
Empty the dregs.
Add 1 gallon of the best brandy.
Seal it again and let it stand for 6 to 8 weeks before bottling.
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 pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Sugar
- Feeds the yeast, which converts it to alcohol, and sets the sweetness and strength of the wine.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the fermentation.
- Clary flowers
- Provide the flavour and aroma that define the wine.
- Brandy
- Raises the alcohol content and helps preserve the finished wine.
The step that matters
Seal it for 4 months until it stops hissing. Fermentation is finished only when the bubbling of carbon dioxide stops. Racking too early, while the wine is still fermenting, can leave it cloudy and unstable.
“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.
You might also like
Vegetable Soup350 recipes
Raspberry Vinegar214 recipes
Brown Coffee with Egg175 recipes
Blackberry Cordial129 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.