Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Ripe Gooseberry Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Put ripe and well-picked red gooseberries into a tub or pan and bruise the fruit well.
Leave the bruised gooseberries uncovered for 24 hours.
Squeeze the juice from the pulp through a fine sieve or canvas bag.
Put the residue from each squeezing into a vessel and pour ½ gallon of boiling water for each gallon of fruit. Stir well for 15 minutes.
Let the mixture stand for 12 hours, then squeeze the pulp through the bag and add the liquor to the juice obtained.
Ferment and mature
Add 2.5 pounds of sugar to each gallon of the liquor and stir well. Let it stand to ferment.
When fermentation is complete, draw it off and add ¾ pint of brandy to each gallon.
Let it stand to settle for 4 to 5 weeks, then carefully draw it off into a cask that will just hold it.
Keep it in a cool cellar for 12 months or more before bottling. Choose a dry, clear, cold day for bottling.
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.
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Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Ripe red gooseberries
- Provide the fruit juice and flavour that form the body of the wine.
- Sugar
- Feeds the fermentation and provides sweetness and alcohol in the finished wine.
- Brandy
- Added after fermentation to raise the alcohol content and help keep the wine stable.
The step that matters
Drawing off after fermentation. Fermentation must be complete before the wine is drawn off and brandy is added. Adding spirit while sugar is still fermenting can stop the yeast early and leave the wine sweeter and less stable.
“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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