Name: Red Mead Wine
Ingredients: 17 gallons cold water; 6 quarts red currants; 2 quarts black currants; 25 pounds honey; 1 pound sliced beet root; 4 ounces red tartar powder; 2 ounces cinnamon powder; 1 gallon brandy

Why it works: Red currant and black currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 72 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Red Mead Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the must

Combine cold water, red currants, and black currants in a large fermentation vessel.
Allow the mixture to ferment.

Blend and rest

In a separate container, mix honey, sliced beet root, red tartar powder, cinnamon powder, and brandy.
Add this mixture to the fermented fruit and water.
Stir well and let it sit to develop flavors.

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.

Red currant + black curranttop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together72 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Black currant + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together28 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).
Honey + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,446 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).
Red currant + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together93 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Cinnamon + brandytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,199 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Honey: Provides the main sweetness and the fermentable sugar that feeds the yeast and builds alcohol.
Red currants: Contribute tartness and fruit flavor, balancing the sweetness of the honey.
Black currants: Add deeper fruit flavor and acidity to the mead.
Brandy: Raises the alcohol content and helps preserve the finished drink.

“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.