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Ripe Gooseberry Wine

A fermented beverage made from ripe gooseberries, sugar, water, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Ripe Gooseberry Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Put ripe and well-picked red gooseberries into a tub or pan and bruise the fruit well. Leave uncovered for 24 hours.

  2. Squeeze the juice from the pulp through a fine sieve or canvas bag.

  3. Put the residue from each squeezing into a vessel and pour ½ gallon of boiling water over it. Stir well for 15 minutes.

  4. Let it stand for 12 hours, then squeeze the pulp through the bag and add the liquor to the juice obtained.

Ferment and age

  1. Add 2½ pounds of sugar to each gallon of the liquor and stir well. Let it stand to ferment.

  2. Once fermentation is complete, draw it off and add ¾ pint of brandy to each gallon.

  3. Let it settle for 4 to 5 weeks, then carefully draw it off into a cask that will just hold it.

  4. Keep it in a cool cellar for 12 months or more before bottling on a dry, clear, cold day.

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).

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

Ripe red gooseberries
Provide the fruit flavour, acidity and the juice that becomes the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbonation while adding sweetness.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content, helping to stabilise the wine and preserve it during aging.

The step that matters

Drawing off after fermentation. Wait until fermentation is complete before adding brandy. Adding spirit while the yeast is still active can stop fermentation early, leaving the wine sweeter and less stable than intended.

“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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