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Drink

Currant Wins

A fermented beverage made from currants, sugar, water, and alcohol.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and rum work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 155 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Currant Wins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Mash and squeeze the currants through a coarse cloth.

  2. Add 1 quart of water and 2 pounds of sugar to the juice. Stir well.

Ferment

  1. Let the mixture sit in a large stone pot for two weeks.

  2. Remove the thick scum that forms on top.

Finish and seal

  1. Add 1 pint of rum or brandy.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a demijohn and seal it tightly.

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. Currant + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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 fruit flavour and the base of the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
Rum or brandy
Adds spirit strength and aroma, helping to preserve the wine.

The step that matters

Removing the scum. The thick scum that forms on top during the two-week rest can carry unwanted microbes and off-flavours. Skimming it off before sealing the wine helps keep the finished drink clean-tasting.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rum. 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.

More currant wine recipes

Black 28Red 22Sauce 9White 8 See all 158 →

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