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Preparation of Fruit Wines

A method for making fruit wine using various fruit juices, currants, nuts, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Hazelnut and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 186 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Preparation of Fruit Wines

Ingredients

Directions

  1. After fermentation, add 5.64 grams of salicylic acid to every 100 quarts of fruit juice to prevent spoilage.

  2. To reduce sugar needs, mix raspberry juice with one-quarter its volume of blackberry juice.

  3. For currant wine, use four-fifths red currants and one-fifth black currants for better flavor and preservation.

  4. Enhance flavor by adding crushed hazelnuts or walnuts to the barrel.

  5. Add 2 ounces and 8 grams of bitter almonds, peels of 10 lemons, and 3 ounces and 5 grams of cassia to improve the wine's flavor.

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. Hazelnut + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together186 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Red currant + black curranttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Raspberry + red curranttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  4. Blackberry + raspberrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together278 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, sweet).

  5. Blackberry + black curranttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Salicylic acid
Acts as a preservative that helps prevent spoilage after fermentation.
Blackberry juice
Blended with raspberry juice to reduce the sugar the wine needs.
Red currants
Provide the main currant flavor and acidity in the currant wine blend.
Black currants
Add depth of flavor and help preserve the currant wine.
Bitter almonds
Add a distinctive bitter, nutty aroma to the wine.

Swap the hazelnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, blackberry, raspberry, red currant, black currant, almond, lemon):

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Hazelnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, blackberry, raspberry, red currant, black currant, almond, lemon. 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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