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Elder Wine

A fermented beverage made from elderberries, damsons, sugar, spices, and hops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Elder Wine

Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Elder Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Boil elder berries and damsons in water until the damsons burst, breaking them with a flat stick.

  2. Strain the mixture and return the liquid to the pot.

  3. For 18 gallons of wine, ensure you have 20 gallons of liquid; add water to the pulp if needed.

Make the wine

  1. Boil for 2 hours with sugar, ginger, allspice, and cinnamon in a muslin bag, along with hops.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then ferment for 2 days.

  3. Drop in the spice bag, suspending it so it doesn't touch the bottom of the cask.

  4. Fill the cask for 2 weeks, then seal with stiff brown paper.

  5. The wine will be ready to tap in 2 months and can keep for 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.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Cinnamon + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Elder berries
Provide the main flavour, colour and body of the wine.
Sugar
Supplies the sweetness and food for yeast fermentation, producing the alcohol.
Damsons or sloes
Add acidity and extra fruit flavour to balance the wine.
Ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma to the wine.
Hops
Add bitterness that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the wine.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, sugar, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, hops, rice):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, hops, rice. 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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