Skip to main content
Drink

Cider Making

A method for clarifying and sulphuring cider using hickory wood, ashes, lime, milk, and sulphur.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and cider are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Cider Making

Ingredients

Directions

Clarify the cider

  1. Stand the cider in open casks or barrels.

  2. Mix hickory wood, ashes, and fresh slaked lime into 1 quart of new milk.

  3. Stir the mixture into the cider to cause the pomace to rise.

  4. Skim the pomace from the surface or let it sit for 10 hours and draw off through a strainer.

Bottle or sulphur the barrel

  1. If bottling, proceed to bottle; if barreling, sulphur the barrel by dipping cloth in melted sulphur and drying it.

  2. Cut the cloth into strips, light one end, and introduce it into the bung-hole of the barrel.

  3. Shake the barrel to absorb the sulphur gas into the cider, then fill the barrel with cider.

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. Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Milk + cidertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

New milk
Its proteins help bind and carry suspended pomace particles so they rise and can be removed.
Ashes
Alkaline material that helps settle and lift suspended solids out of the cider.
Fresh slaked lime (in the method)
Alkaline agent that helps the pomace separate and rise from the cider.
Hickory wood
Contributes ash and minerals that aid in clarifying the cider during this treatment.

The step that matters

Stirring the milk mixture into the cider. Stirring must be gentle but thorough so the clarifying agents reach all the cider; uneven mixing leaves cloudy patches and pomace that fails to rise evenly.

“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.

You might also like

Apple WaterApple Water81 recipesApple CiderApple Cider11 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipes