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Gooseberry Wine, Still

A still wine made by fermenting gooseberries with sugar and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Gooseberry Wine, Still

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pick and bruise the gooseberries.

  2. Place the bruised gooseberries in a large tub.

  3. Let the fruit stand for 24 hours.

  4. Drain off the juice.

  5. Add ½ gallon of lukewarm water for every gallon of gooseberries.

  6. Let the mixture stand for 12 hours.

  7. Mix the water with the juice.

Ferment and age

  1. Add 12 pounds of loaf sugar to the 5 gallons of liquid.

  2. Allow the mixture to ferment well.

  3. Adjust the temperature as needed.

  4. Transfer the liquid to a barrel.

  5. Add 2 quarts of brandy.

  6. Seal the barrel tightly.

  7. Let the wine age for at least 12 months before using.

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. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Gooseberries
Provide the fruit flavour, acidity and the juice that becomes the wine.
Loaf sugar
Feeds the fermentation and provides the sweetness that balances the wine's acidity.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content, which helps preserve the wine during ageing.

The step that matters

Adjust the temperature as needed. Yeast fermentation is sensitive to temperature. If the liquid is too hot, yeast can die or stall, and if it is too cold, fermentation becomes slow or incomplete, affecting the final wine.

“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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