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Mr. Carnell's Receipt for Making Red Currant Wine

A fermented wine made from red currants, raspberries, beet root, sugar, tartar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and brandy work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 105 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Mr. Carnell's Receipt for Making Red Currant Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Bruise the red currants with the raspberries and press out the juice.

  2. Add the cold water to the remaining pulp and mix well.

  3. Infuse the sliced beet root in the mixture for 12 hours, stirring frequently.

  4. Press out the liquor again.

  5. Combine the pressed liquor with the juice.

Ferment and mature

  1. Dissolve the raw sugar and red tartar in the mixed liquor.

  2. Allow fermentation to begin and manage it as per gooseberry wine instructions.

  3. Once fermentation is complete, add the brandy.

  4. Let the wine stand for a week.

  5. Rack the wine off.

  6. Store the wine in a cool cellar for two months before final racking.

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  3. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

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

Red currants
Provide the main fruit flavour, acidity and tannin-based structure to the wine.
Raw sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and sweetness balance.
Red tartar
Adds acidity, sharpening the flavour and supporting a clean, stable wine.
Brandy
Adds alcohol strength and fortifies the wine once fermentation is complete.
Raspberries
Add aroma and fruity flavour to the juice.

The step that matters

Adding the brandy after fermentation. Brandy added before fermentation ends would halt the yeast early, leaving the wine sweeter and less fully fermented. Waiting until fermentation is complete lets the yeast finish converting sugar first.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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