Why it works: Cherry and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,598 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Cherry Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Stone and mash the cherries, then strain the juice.
Add 1 to 1.5 pints of water to the cherry juice, depending on its richness.
For every gallon of the mixture, add 3 pounds of sugar.
Ferment and bottle
Let the mixture stand in an open jar covered with mosquito netting until fermentation stops.
Bottle and cork the wine.
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.
-
Cherry + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,598 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cherry juice
- Supplies the fruit flavor and the natural sugars that yeast ferments into alcohol.
- Sugar
- Feeds the yeast, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide, and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
The step that matters
Letting fermentation stop before bottling. Yeast keeps producing carbon dioxide while sugar remains. Bottling too early can leave the wine fizzy or cause bottles to build pressure, so the mixture should stand until fermentation has fully stopped.
“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.
More cherry wine recipes
You might also like
Vegetable Soup350 recipes
Raspberry Vinegar214 recipes
Brown Coffee with Egg175 recipes
Blackberry Cordial129 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.