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Drink

Elderberry Wine

A fermented beverage made from elderberries, water, sugar, spices, and tartar, then aged and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Elderberry Wine

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Elderberry Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Boil the elderberries in water for 1 hour.

  2. Tie allspice and ginger in a piece of linen and add to the boiling mixture.

  3. Strain the boiling liquid over the sugar in a tub, pressing the fruit dry.

  4. Add the tartar to the liquid and let it stand for 2 days.

Cask and serve

  1. Transfer to a cask and treat as for sweet wine, bottling in March.

  2. To serve, heat a portion with sugar, cloves, and nutmeg.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Elderberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour of the wine.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and feeds fermentation, which produces alcohol.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity, giving the wine a brighter, sharper taste.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the wine.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the wine.

The step that matters

Straining over the sugar while the liquid is still boiling. The hot liquid dissolves the sugar fully, so the sugar is evenly distributed before fermentation begins. Pressing the fruit dry gets the most juice and flavour out of the elderberries.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, allspice, cream, clove, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Winter savoryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, allspice, cream, clove, nutmeg. 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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