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Drink

British Port

A fortified wine made by blending port wine, cider, brandy, elderberry and sloe juices, colored with cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and cider share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41 recipes. Both carry ethyl pentanoate, which smells yeast, fruit. The science ↓

British Port

Ingredients

Directions

Make the blend

  1. Put 8 gallons of genuine port wine into a clean 60-gallon cask.

  2. Add 40 gallons of good cider.

  3. Fill the cask with French brandy.

Flavor and color

  1. Add the juice of elderberries and sloes for roughness.

  2. Adjust color with cochineal as desired.

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. Port wine + cidertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together41 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  2. Cider + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Port wine + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Port wine
Provides the base sweetness and deep wine character of the blend.
Cider
Adds bulk and a fruity, lightly acidic body to the blend.
French brandy
Raises the alcohol content and adds spirited warmth to the blend.
Elderberries
Contribute tannin-like roughness and dark fruit flavor to the blend.
Sloes
Add astringency and tart, dark fruit notes that give the blend its bite.

“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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