Name: Black Currant Wine
Ingredients: 4 quarts whiskey; 4 quarts black currants; 4 pounds brown or white sugar; 1 tablespoon cloves; 1 tablespoon cinnamon

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Black Currant Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate

Crush the black currants and combine them with whiskey and spices in a container.
Let the mixture stand for three weeks.

Sweeten and age

Strain the mixture and add the sugar.
Set it aside for another three weeks.

Strain and bottle

Strain again and bottle the wine.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Black currant + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together28 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).
Black currant + clovetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together40 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together393 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Black currants: Provide the main fruit flavor, tartness and deep color to the wine.
Whiskey: Acts as the solvent that draws flavor and color out of the currants and spices.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the currants and the bite of the whiskey.
Cloves: Add warm, aromatic spice flavor to the finished wine.
Cinnamon: Adds warm, sweet aroma that complements the currants.