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Ginger Wine

A fermented beverage made from ginger, water, sugar, lemons, brandy, and yeast.

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

Prepare the ginger

  1. Bruise the ginger and mix it with water in a large pot.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes.

Make the wine base

  1. Add brown sugar and boil until dissolved.

  2. Cool the mixture and strain it into a cask.

  3. Add sliced lemons, brandy, and yeast.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Close the bung and let it ferment undisturbed for 3 months.

  2. After fermentation, bottle the ginger wine.

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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Ginger + brandytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Ginger and sugar 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

Root ginger
Supplies the main flavour and aroma of the wine.
Brown sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast converts into alcohol, and adds sweetness.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Sliced lemons
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Brandy
Adds extra alcohol and a rounder, warming character to the wine.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the boiled liquid must cool fully before the yeast goes in. Adding it while hot can stop fermentation before it starts.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Apricotfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, 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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