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Red and White Currant Wine

A fermented wine made from red and white currants, sugar, tartar, herbs, and spirits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: White currant and red currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Red and White Currant Wine

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine 12 gallons of cold soft water with 4 gallons of white currants and 3 gallons of red currants.

  2. Add 25 lbs of raw sugar and 3 oz of cream of tartar, mixing well.

  3. Incorporate 1 handful each of sweet briar and lavender leaves.

  4. Add 2 quarts or more of spirits to the mixture.

  5. Allow the mixture to ferment.

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. White currant + red curranttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  3. Lavender + spirittop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together122 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cream + spirittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together99 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sugar + spirittop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raw sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and provides the sweetness and alcohol the wine will carry.
White currants
Supply fruit flavour, acidity and the sugars and nutrients that drive fermentation.
Red currants
Add colour, tartness and fruit flavour to the finished wine.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps keep the wine stable.

The step that matters

Adding the spirits. The spirits are added after the other ingredients, so the mixture is not yet fully fermented and the added alcohol stops further fermentation. Adding them too early or too little changes how sweet and strong the wine ends up.

Swap the white currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red currant, sugar, cream, lavender, spirit):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against red currant, sugar, cream, lavender, spirit. 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.

More currant wine recipes

Black 28Red 22Sauce 9White 8 See all 158 →

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