Name: To Make Gooseberry Wine
Ingredients: 6 pounds ripe gooseberries; 1 gallon soft, filtered, or distilled water; 4 pounds sugar; 1.25 ounces cream of tartar; 1-2 ounces rectified spirits of wine (optional)

Why it works: Spirit and wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 701 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

To Make Gooseberry Wine

Ingredients

6 pounds ripe gooseberries
1 gallon soft, filtered, or distilled water
4 pounds sugar
1.25 ounces cream of tartar
1-2 ounces rectified spirits of wine (optional)

Directions

Prepare

Wash and prepare the gooseberries as directed in the general principles section.
Make a syrup with part of the water and the sugar.

Combine and ferment

Combine the syrup, remaining water, cream of tartar, and optional spirits with the prepared gooseberries.
Follow the fermentation instructions from the general principles section.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Spirit + winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together701 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cream + spirittop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together99 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Cream + winetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,887 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Sugar + spirittop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together602 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries: Provide the fruit flavour and the main body of the wine.
Sugar: Dissolved into syrup to feed the yeast and give the wine its sweetness and alcohol.
Cream of tartar: Adds acidity, which supports a clean flavour and helps keep the wine stable.

“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.