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Drink

Currant Wine, Red

A fermented beverage made from ripe red currants, sugar, water, and French brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Currant Wine, Red

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pick the currants from the stalks.

  2. Bruise the currants.

  3. Press out the juice.

  4. Infuse the residue in cold water. Mix the residue well. Press out the liquor.

  5. Mix the liquor with the juice.

Ferment

  1. Add loaf sugar.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a cask. Leave some space unfilled in the cask. Bung the cask. Bore a hole through the cask.

  3. Let the cask stand at 70°F (21°C) for a month.

  4. Add dissolved sugar in warm water. Shake the cask. Bung the cask again.

  5. Check if fermentation has ceased by listening at the bunghole.

Clarify and age

  1. Rack off the clear liquor from the sediment. Mix in the French brandy.

  2. Set it aside in the cellar for 2 months.

  3. Rack off into a clean but not new cask. Fill the cask tightly. Bung it down to exclude air.

  4. Preserve for at least a year at 70°F (21°C). Keep it near a fire if necessary.

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 the juice that forms the wine.
Loaf sugar
Feeds the fermentation, which turns sugar into alcohol, and sets the wine's sweetness.
French brandy
Adds alcohol and aroma, helping to preserve the wine once fermentation is finished.

The step that matters

Check that fermentation has ceased before racking. While yeast is still converting sugar, gas builds up and can burst the cask or leave the wine cloudy. Adding brandy before fermentation stops can halt it unevenly and spoil the wine.

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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