Top pairings

Top food pairings for cider (updated)

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on October 21 2024 at 08:15

Cider has been going through the same quality revolution as beer did a few years ago. In the last 12 months I’ve tasted more interesting ciders than I have in the last 12 years.

So it’s a shame we don’t take it more seriously as a partner for food especially as many are now bottled in handsome-looking full-sized bottles.

There are many different styles, obviously, but here are the type of foods I think pair best with cider and some avenues that I think might be worth exploring:

Creamy or cider-based sauces
This is cider’s natural territory and the most useful type of dish to think to think in terms of (rather than focussing on chicken, pork or seafood which can be prepared in so many different ways). The sort of sauces you find in Normandy which, of course is cider’s heartland.

Think also of chicken casseroles or pies cooked with cider and sausages with cider (any dish cooked with onion and apples is an obvious match. Try this West Country Chicken Casserole with cider, apple and celery).

Creamy pasta bakes
Same reasoning as the above

Quiche
Especially quiche lorraine and leek quiche

Creamy vegetable or chicken soups - onion, mushroom, celery, fennel, leek . . .

Creamy risottos with similar flavourings

Ham and other cold cuts
Hot or cold. Cider is a good partner for boiled or roast gammon (and can also be used in the cooking liquid) and lovely with fat chunks of ham cut off the bone. It’s also good with other pork-based products like patés, terrines and rillettes (without too much garlic) and brawn or jambon persillé, Melton Mowbray (and other) pork pies and Scotch eggs.

Salads
Particularly those based on chicken, ham or cheese with a light creamy dressing or with apple as an ingredient though this smoked mackerel salad with pickled cucumber (below) was a winner with a traditional Spanish ‘ancestral’ cider.

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Tags: sausages ham chicken cheddar cheese cider drink:beer & cider chicken pie

Comments: 3 (Add)

Fiona Beckett on October 21 2024 at 10:15

You're quite right, Martha. That's a bit of an omission though guess it comes under creamy sauces

Martha on April 5 2020 at 11:11

You don't suggest any fish or shellfish foods despite Normandy having a substantial coastline and historic, so I did a little reccy and found recipes for moules which I think you could make and eat with cider

Andrew Stevenson on September 20 2012 at 00:15

If you don't want lots and lots of different glasses of wine, the local Cowmire cider at L'Enclume in Cartmel makes a remarkably good choice to drink throughout the (long and varied) meal there.

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