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Drink

White Currants in Brandy

A preserved beverage made by steeping white currants in brandy sweetened with clarified sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

White Currants in Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the white currants in a glass jar.

  2. Mix a small amount of clarified sugar into enough white brandy to sweeten it.

  3. Pour the sweetened brandy over the currants.

  4. Seal the jar tightly with a bladder.

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).

  2. White currant + brandytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together59 recipes

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

White currants
Provide the fruit flavour and juice that mingles with the brandy.
Clarified sugar
Sweetens the brandy and balances the tartness of the currants.
White brandy
Acts as the preserving liquid and draws out the flavour of the fruit.

Swap the white currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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