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Drink

Dutch Currant Wine

A fermented wine made from red currants, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Dutch Currant Wine

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine warm water and red currants in a large container.

  2. Add raw sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Allow the mixture to ferment.

  4. Once fermented, add dissolved red tartar, bitter almonds, cloves, and bruised ginger.

  5. Seal the container tightly.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Red currant + almondtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together90 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Almond + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,605 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Red currant + clovetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together128 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  5. Almond + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the fruit flavour, acidity and sugars that the yeast ferments into wine.
Raw sugar
Feeds the fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide while adding sweetness.
Red tartar
Adds tartaric acid, giving the wine a sharper, brighter acidity.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, almond, clove, ginger. 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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