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Drink

Mixed Currant

A fruit wine made from black, red, white currants, cherries, raspberries, strawberries, sugar, water, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and red 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 ↓

Mixed Currant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Bruise the black, red, and white currants, cherries, raspberries, and strawberries.

  2. Add 1 gallon of clear soft water to the bruised fruit.

  3. Steep the mixture for 3 days in open vessels, stirring frequently.

  4. Strain through a sieve and press the pulp to dryness.

Make the wine

  1. Add 3 pounds of good moist sugar to the strained liquid.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 3 days, skimming off the top and stirring frequently.

  3. Transfer to casks and let it work for 2 weeks.

  4. Afterward, add 1 quart of brandy for every 9 gallons and seal the casks.

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. Black currant + red curranttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Red currant + white curranttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Red currant + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Black currant + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

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

Black, red, and white currants
Provide the main fruit flavour, acidity and colour of the wine.
Cherries, raspberries, and strawberries
Add extra fruit aroma and body to the blended juice.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbonation.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and stabilises the finished wine.

The step that matters

Pressing the pulp after straining. Pressing the pulp to dryness extracts the remaining juice and pectin-rich solids; over-pressing can release bitter, cloudy compounds from the skins and seeds into the wine.

Swap the white currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against black currant, red currant, 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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