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Drink

Cyprus Wine

A fermented beverage made from water, white eider berry juice, sugar, ginger, cloves, raisins, yeast, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cyprus Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Squeeze the juice from the white eider berries.

  2. Strain the juice through a sieve.

  3. In a large pot, combine the water and berry juice.

Boil and cool

  1. Add 3 pounds of sugar for each gallon of liquor.

  2. Stir in the sliced ginger and cloves.

  3. Boil the mixture for about 1 hour.

  4. Skim off any scum that rises.

  5. Pour the mixture into an open tub to cool.

Ferment and clear

  1. Add ale yeast spread on a slice of white bread.

  2. Let the mixture sit for 3 days.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a suitable vessel.

  4. Add the sun-dried raisins.

  5. Let the wine sit until it is clear.

  6. Draw the wine off.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Berry + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Clove + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Berry + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

White eider berry juice
Provides the main fruit flavour and the sugars that the yeast ferments into alcohol.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, which converts it into alcohol and carbon dioxide, and adds sweetness.
Ale yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol, turning the juice into wine.
Sun-dried raisins
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and extra fermentable sugar to the wine.

The step that matters

Let the wine sit until it is clear. Suspended yeast and fruit particles make the wine cloudy. Letting it rest lets them settle, so drawing it off leaves a clear wine above the sediment.

Swap the berry

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Berrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, clove, raisin, 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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