Skip to main content
Drink

Black or White Elder Wine

A fermented elderberry beverage made with water, sugar, egg whites, yeast, and mountain wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Black or White Elder Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Gather elderberries, remove stems, and bruise them with your hands.

  2. Strain the juice and let it settle in glazed earthen vessels for 12 hours.

  3. For every pint of juice, add 1½ pints of water and for every gallon, add 3 pounds of moist sugar.

Make the wine

  1. Heat the mixture in a kettle until it is ready to boil, then clarify with the egg whites.

  2. Boil for 1 hour, then let it cool almost completely.

  3. Stir in strong ale yeast and fill the vessel as it sinks over time.

  4. After 1 month, if the vessel holds about 8 gallons, it will be ready to bottle.

  5. If using a larger vessel, let it stand for 3-4 months.

  6. Before bottling, fine the liquor to prevent sharpness and fermentation.

  7. Add 1 pint of strong mountain wine for every gallon of liquid.

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 + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

  3. Egg + winetop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Elderberries
Provide the juice, colour and main flavour of the wine.
Moist sugar
Feeds the yeast and provides the sweetness and alcohol in the finished wine.
Egg whites
Collect suspended particles during clarifying so the wine runs clearer.
Strong ale yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Strong mountain wine
Adds extra strength and body to the finished wine.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool almost completely before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to a mixture that is still hot can stop fermentation before it starts.

“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.

You might also like

Wine WheyWine Whey111 recipesRaisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesEgg WineEgg Wine58 recipesElderberry WineElderberry Wine51 recipes