Skip to main content

French Method of Making Superior Gooseberry and Currant Wine

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

French Method of Making Superior Gooseberry and Currant Wine

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve honey in boiling water.

  2. Add juice of currants when clarified.

  3. Ferment for 24 hours.

  4. Add 2 pounds of sugar for every 2 gallons of water.

  5. Clarify with whites of eggs and cream of tartar.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Honey + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,932 recipes

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

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Swap the white currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, sugar, egg, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Black Currant CordialBlack Currant Cordial11 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes