Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Currant Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Pick currants on a dry day and make wine the same day.
Remove currants from stems, bruise, press, and strain to extract juice.
Ferment
Mix currant juice with soft water and sugar until dissolved.
Pour mixture into a keg and let it ferment for 12-14 days, covering the bung hole with coarse muslin.
After fermentation, beat the egg whites and stir them into the cask.
Lightly place the bung in the keg.
Secure the bung more firmly on the second day.
Cover the bung with bottle cement on the third day.
Age and clarify
Let it stand for 5-6 months.
Rack it off.
Refine with isinglass, milk, or more egg white if not clear.
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.
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,734 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,256 recipes
Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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
- Currant juice
- Provides the main flavour and the fruit sugars and acids that the wine is built on.
- Loaf sugar
- Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide, and sets the final sweetness.
- Eggs
- Egg whites are stirred into the cask to help clarify the wine as it settles.
The step that matters
Fermenting under a covered bung. The bung must be loose enough to let carbon dioxide escape while keeping air and contaminants out. If sealed too tightly, pressure can build and the keg may burst; if left open, vinegar bacteria and spoilage can take hold.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Lemonfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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