Skip to main content
Drink

Black Currant Wine

A fermented beverage made from black currants, whisky, sugar, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Steep the fruit

  1. Crush the black currants and combine them with the whisky and spices in a large container.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 3 weeks.

Sweeten and bottle

  1. Strain the mixture and add the sugar.

  2. Set it aside for another 3 weeks.

  3. 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.

  1. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Black currant + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together28 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Black currant + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together40 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Whisky + black curranttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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 and tartness.
Whisky
Acts as the solvent that draws flavor out of the fruit and spices.
Sugar
Sweetens the wine and balances the tartness of the currants.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavor.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma.

Swap the black currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Black currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whisky, sugar, clove, cinnamon. 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.

You might also like

Black Currant CordialBlack Currant Cordial11 recipesCinnamon TinctureCinnamon Tincture10 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipes