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Gooseberry Champagne

A fermented beverage made from gooseberries, sugar, brandy, egg whites, salt, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Gooseberry Champagne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the must

  1. Wash the gooseberries and place them in a stone jar.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the gooseberries and cover the jar.

  3. Let it stand for 8-9 hours, then strain the mixture.

  4. Add ¾ pound of sugar for each quart of liquid and let it stand for another 8-9 hours, stirring several times.

Ferment and age

  1. Pour the mixture into a cask of appropriate size.

  2. Once it stops hissing, seal the cask and add 1 pint of brandy for every gallon of wine.

  3. Bottle the mixture after 3-4 months in cold weather.

Refine and bottle

  1. Refine by adding the beaten egg whites and salt for every gallon.

  2. Place 2-3 raisins in each bottle.

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 + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  5. 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, acidity and flavour base of the wine.
Sugar
Feeds fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and stabilises the wine against further fermentation.
Egg whites
Fining agent that binds suspended particles so they settle out, clearing the wine.

The step that matters

Sealing the cask once fermentation quiets. Adding brandy and sealing only after the hissing stops lets fermentation finish gently. Sealing too early can trap gas and build pressure, while adding brandy too soon halts fermentation before the sugar is used up.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy, wine, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, wine, 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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