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Drink

Turnip Wine

A fermented beverage made from sliced turnips, 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 ↓

Turnip Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

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

  2. Add 3 pounds of sugar and ½ pint of brandy for every gallon of juice.

Ferment and store

  1. Cover the mixture loosely until fermentation stops.

  2. Seal the mixture tightly and let it sit for three months.

  3. Transfer to another cask for storage.

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
Supply the juice that becomes the body of the wine and feeds fermentation.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, producing alcohol and the wine's sweetness.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content, helping preserve the wine during storage.

The step that matters

Switching from loose cover to tight seal. Covering loosely lets carbon dioxide escape while fermentation is active. Sealing only after fermentation stops prevents oxygen from souring or spoiling the wine, and traps the finished flavour.

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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