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To Keep Cider

A method for preserving cider using sugar, egg whites, salt, horseradish, charcoal, sulfur, and heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Keep Cider

Ingredients

Directions

Ferment the cider

  1. Dissolve ¾ pound of sugar in 1 gallon of cider.

  2. Add 6 beaten egg whites and a handful of coarse sea salt.

  3. Leave the mixture open until fermentation ceases, then seal it tightly.

  4. Allow the cider to ferment to taste.

Flavour and rack

  1. Add 1½ tumblers of grated horseradish and shake well.

  2. After a few weeks, rack off and seal in clean casks.

Fume and store

  1. Mix 1 ounce of powdered charcoal and 1 ounce of powdered sulfur in an iron vessel.

  2. Heat a piece of red-hot iron and lower it into the mixture above the cider for 12 hours.

  3. Store the cider in a tight barrel in a cool cellar.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cider + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Horseradish + cidertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together338 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Cider
Forms the liquid base that ferments and develops the drink's character.
Sugar
Feeds the fermentation and adds a touch of sweetness to balance the cider.
Egg whites
Bind suspended particles so they settle out, clarifying the cider.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that carries through the cider.

The step that matters

Leave open until fermentation ceases, then seal. Fermentation gives off carbon dioxide. Sealing the cider while it is still fermenting can build pressure in the vessel, so wait until activity stops before closing it tightly.

“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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