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Ginger Wine

A fermented ginger wine made with water, sugar, ginger, lemon, yeast, raisins, clarified with isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the water, loaf sugar, and bruised ginger together for 1 hour.

  2. Cool the mixture until tepid.

  3. Add the juice and peel of the lemons and the yeast-covered bread.

Ferment and clarify

  1. Cover the vessel and let it ferment for 2 to 3 weeks.

  2. Before sealing, add ½ lb of slit-open raisins for every gallon.

  3. Rack the wine.

  4. Add isinglass to clarify.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the wine; it will be ready to drink soon and can improve over 1 to 2 years.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + raisintop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,111 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Loaf sugar
Provides the sweetness and the fuel that yeast turns into alcohol during fermentation.
Yeast-covered bread
Supplies the yeast cultures that start the fermentation.
Raisins
Add body, sweetness, and nutrients that feed the fermenting yeast.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma, brightening the flavour of the wine.
Bruised ginger
Contributes its characteristic spicy aroma and warmth to the wine.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture until tepid before adding the yeast bread. Yeast is killed or slowed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must be cooled to lukewarm before the yeast-covered bread goes in to start fermentation reliably.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, ginger, lemon, bread):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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