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Currant Wine— No. 1

A fermented currant juice beverage sweetened with brown sugar and finished with whisky.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and whisky work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Currant Wine— No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine currant juice and soft water in a large container.

  2. Add brown sugar and stir until dissolved.

Ferment

  1. Let the mixture ferment for 7 to 10 days, and keep a jug of the mixture to refill the keg as needed.

Finish and store

  1. Once fermentation is complete, add whisky to the keg.

  2. Store in a cool cellar for 1 to 2 months before bottling.

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. Currant + whiskytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Sugar + whiskytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,008 recipes

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

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Currant juice
Provides the fruit flavour and acidity that define the wine.
Brown sugar
Feeds the yeast to produce alcohol, and adds sweetness.
Whisky
Raises the alcohol content, which helps preserve the finished wine.

The step that matters

Keeping a jug of the mixture to refill the keg. Fermentation releases carbon dioxide and lowers the liquid level in the keg. Topping up with reserved mixture keeps air out, limiting oxidation and spoilage by unwanted microbes.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, whisky. 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

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