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Raisin Wine with Cider

A fermented wine made from Malaga raisins steeped in cider and finished with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and brandy work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Raisin Wine with Cider

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place 200 pounds of Malaga raisins into a cask.

  2. Pour 63 gallons of good cider over the raisins.

  3. Stir the mixture well for two to three days.

Age and finish

  1. Stop the cask and let it stand for six months.

  2. After six months, rack the wine into a cask that it will fill.

  3. Add 1 glass of the best brandy to the cask.

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. Cider + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Raisin + cidertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together588 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Malaga raisins
Supply sugar and fruit flavour that ferment into the body of the wine.
Cider
Provides the liquid and sugars that yeast ferments to produce alcohol.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and helps preserve the finished wine.

The step that matters

Stop the cask and let it stand for six months. Sealing the cask keeps air out so the fermentation can finish slowly without the wine turning sour through oxidation. Racking later separates the wine from settled sediment.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, brandy):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Currantfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, brandy. 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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