Name: Cherry Wine
Ingredients: 15 pounds cherries; 2 pounds currants; 2/3 of the kernels; 1/4 pound sugar per pint of juice

Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

Cherry Wine

Ingredients

15 pounds cherries
2 pounds currants
2/3 of the kernels
1/4 pound sugar per pint of juice

Directions

Prepare the mixture

Bruise the cherries and currants together.
Mix in two-thirds of the kernels.
Put the mixture into a barrel.
Add 1/4 pound of sugar for every pint of juice.
Fill the barrel completely.

Ferment and bottle

Cover with vine leaves and sand.
Let it stand for about three weeks until fermentation is complete.
Stop the barrel with a bung.
Bottle the wine after two months.

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.

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

Cherries: Provide the fruit base and juice that ferments into the wine.
Currants: Add extra juice and tartness to the fruit base.
Sugar: Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished wine.

“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.