Why it works: Rhubarb and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,852 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Bhubabb Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the rhubarb
Pluck the rhubarb stalks and discard the leaves.
Bruise the stalks in a large mortar until they become a pulp.
Place the pulp in an open vat or tub and add 1 gallon of cold spring water. Let it infuse for three days, stirring three or four times a day.
On the fourth day, press the pulp and strain off the liquid.
Ferment and age
Add 3 lb of white loaf sugar to the liquid and stir until dissolved.
Allow the mixture to ferment; when fermentation subsides and a crust forms, skim it off.
Transfer the wine to a cask without sealing it. If fermentation continues in the cask, rack it into another cask.
After two weeks, seal the cask and let it sit until March of the following year.
Rack the wine again and seal the cask; if it has lost sweetness, add more sugar.
In one to six weeks, the wine will be ready to bottle and can be enjoyed in summer.
The wine improves with age, so consider letting it sit for a year or more.
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.
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Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,852 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Rhubarb stalks
- Provides the tart flavour and the fruit base that the wine is made from.
- White loaf sugar
- Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
- Cold spring water
- Makes up the liquid in which the rhubarb infuses and later ferments.
The step that matters
Adding the sugar and fermenting. Sugar is the food yeast turns into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Stirring it in until fully dissolved lets fermentation start evenly, and racking and sealing at the right time keeps the wine from over-fermenting or going flat.
“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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