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Champagne Wine of Gooseberries

A fermented beverage made by macerating gooseberries, adding sugar and brandy, and clarifying with egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,340 recipes. Both carry acetoin, which smells butter, cream. The science ↓

Champagne Wine of Gooseberries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Gather one bushel of the best cultivated gooseberries just before they ripen.

  2. Bruise the gooseberries thoroughly.

  3. Pour 3 gallons of scalding water over them in a charred open cask.

  4. Cover the cask with a blanket and stir daily for 4 days.

  5. Press the mixture.

  6. Add 3 pounds of powdered sugar for every gallon of juice. Allow the sugar to dissolve.

Ferment and age

  1. After 12 to 14 days of fermentation, lightly bung the cask.

  2. Gradually make the cask airtight over 3 days.

  3. Let it stand undisturbed until December.

  4. Rack off on a clear, dry day.

  5. Add 1/8 of the best brandy.

  6. Let it sit until June.

Clarify and bottle

  1. If not bright and clear, refine with the beaten whites of 6 eggs.

  2. Bottle in fresh bottles with new corks. Dip the necks in bottle cement.

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. Brandy + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 juice and flavour that the wine is built on.
Powdered sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and sets the sweetness and alcohol level.
Brandy
Added after racking to raise alcohol and help preserve the wine.
Egg whites
Bind suspended particles so they can be removed, clearing the wine.

The step that matters

Keep the cask airtight after fermentation starts. Once the vigorous fermentation slows, air exposure lets the wine oxidise and spoil or turn vinegary. Closing the cask gradually, as the record describes, lets the gas escape while keeping air out.

“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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