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Drink

Ginger Wine

A fermented beverage made by boiling sugar, ginger, bitter oranges, lemons, and water, then adding whisky.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger 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

  1. Boil the sugar and bruised ginger with the water for 30 minutes.

  2. Allow the mixture to stand until the next day.

  3. Pare the fruit very thin.

Combine and steep

  1. Add the strained juice and half the peel to a cask with the whisky.

  2. After it has stood overnight, pour the clear part of the boiled liquid over it.

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

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

  2. Ginger + whiskytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bitter orange + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and body to balance the tart citrus and spirit.
Ginger
Adds its pungent, warming aroma and flavor to the liquid.
Lemons
Juice adds acidity and brightness that lift the sweetness.
Bitter oranges
Juice and peel add acidity and fragrant citrus oils.
Whisky
Extracts and carries the flavors of the fruit and ginger while adding alcohol strength.

The step that matters

Pouring off only the clear boiled liquid. Boiling leaves fine solids that settle as sediment. Pouring only the clear part over the fruit and spirit keeps the finished wine clearer and avoids a gritty, cloudy result.

Swap the bitter orange

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Bitter orangethe original

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