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Elder Wine

A fermented beverage made from elder berries, sugar, water, ginger, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Elder Wine

Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Elder Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice and ginger

  1. Extract juice from elder berries to yield about 6 quarts.

  2. In a large pot, combine 16 quarts of water and wash the husks of the berries.

  3. Boil 6 ounces of ginger in water, strain, and boil a second time.

  4. Add the ginger infusion and the elderberry juice to the water with the husks.

Ferment and flavour

  1. Transfer the mixture to a cask and allow fermentation to complete.

  2. Once fermentation is over, add some well-dried spices 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Elder berries
Provide the juice that gives the wine its main fruit flavour and body.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and sweetness.
Ginger
Adds a sharp, warming aroma and flavour to the wine.
Well-dried spices
Add aroma and flavour after fermentation is finished.

“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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