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Raisin Wine Without Cider

A fermented raisin wine made by macerating raisins in water, pressing, and adding brandy after aging.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,768 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Raisin Wine Without Cider

Ingredients

Directions

Steep and press the raisins

  1. Pour the spring water over the raisins and stir well daily for 14 days.

  2. Squeeze the raisins in a horse-hair bag using a press and collect the liquid.

Age the wine

  1. When the liquid stops hissing, seal it tightly.

  2. After 6 months, transfer it to another cask or tub, leaving sediment behind.

  3. Add the gallon of brandy and seal it tightly.

Bottle

  1. Bottle after another 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.

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. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Malaga raisins
Supply the sugars, fruit flavour and body that the wine is built from.
Spring water
Dissolves the raisin sugars and flavours so yeast can ferment them into wine.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content, which helps preserve the wine during long ageing.

The step that matters

Sealing after the hissing stops. Hissing comes from carbon dioxide released during fermentation. Sealing the cask while it is still fermenting can trap gas and build pressure. Waiting until the hissing stops shows that fermentation has largely finished before the vessel is closed.

“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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