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Drink

Ginger Wine

A fermented beverage made from water, sugar, ginger, lemon, yeast, raisins, and clarified with isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Boil water, sugar, and ginger together for 1 hour.

  2. Cool the mixture until tepid.

Ferment

  1. Add lemon juice, lemon peel, and the yeast-covered toast.

  2. Cover the vessel and let it ferment for 2 to 3 weeks.

  3. Before sealing, add the raisins.

Clarify and bottle

  1. After a month, rack the wine and add isinglass to clarify.

  2. Bottle the wine in 3 to 4 weeks; it will be ready to drink soon.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. 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

Raisins
Add sugar and body, and feed the yeast during fermentation.
Loaf sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast converts into alcohol, and sweetness in the finished wine.
Lemons
Add acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness of the wine.
Yeast
Converts sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture until tepid before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by boiling-hot liquid, so the mixture must cool to a warm temperature before the yeast-covered toast goes in, or fermentation may never start.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, ginger, lemon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, lemon. 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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