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Drink

Ginger Wine

Fermented drink made from citrus peels, ginger, sugar, and optional raisins, gin or brandy, aged for months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the orange and lemons very thinly.

  2. Pour boiling water over the peels and break up the fruit.

  3. Crush the ginger and tie it loosely in a muslin bag.

  4. Boil the ginger with the sugar in a portion of the water for 15 minutes.

Ferment

  1. Mix the boiled sugar, ginger, peels, and fruit together in a cask.

  2. Add the remaining water and stir well.

  3. When tepid, add a toast dipped in yeast.

  4. After 10 days, put the bung in the barrel and let it sit for at least 4 months before bottling.

  5. For improved color, add a little burnt sugar and optionally a bottle of gin or brandy a month before bottling.

  6. If the wine appears cloudy, tie 2 ounces of isinglass in a muslin bag and let it remain in the wine for a month.

  7. For added strength and flavor, split open and add ½ pound of raisins to the cask with the ginger.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Orange + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 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

Ginger
Supplies the spicy aroma and characteristic flavor of the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast so it can produce alcohol and carbonation, and adds sweetness.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright citrus aroma from the peel and juice.
Orange
Adds sweetness, citrus aroma and flavor from the peel and fruit.
Yeast (in the method)
Ferments the sugars into alcohol, driving the fermentation of the wine.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast-dipped toast when tepid. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must be cooled to lukewarm before the toast is added. Too hot and fermentation will not start.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, orange, ginger, sugar, gin):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, ginger, sugar, gin. 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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