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Drink

Tuknip Wine

A fermented beverage made from turnip juice, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Tuknip Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Press sliced turnips in a cider press to extract all the juice.

Ferment and age

  1. For every gallon of juice, add 3 pounds of sugar and ½ pint of brandy.

  2. Cover the mixture loosely until fermentation stops.

  3. After fermentation, transfer to another cask and seal tightly for three months.

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. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  2. Turnip + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,330 recipes

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

  3. Turnip + brandytop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Turnips
Provide the juice that ferments into the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and sweetness in the finished wine.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content, helping preserve the wine during aging.

The step that matters

Sealing the cask after fermentation. Once fermentation stops, the wine must be sealed tightly to limit air contact. Oxygen can allow spoilage microbes and acetic acid bacteria to sour the wine during the long aging period.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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