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Gooseberry Champagne

A fermented beverage made from gooseberries, sugar, water, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Gooseberry Champagne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the must

  1. Select large, full-grown gooseberries before they turn red.

  2. Mash the berries with a little water in a clean tub.

  3. Add the remaining water and stir well.

  4. Cover the tub with a clean cloth and let it stand for four days, stirring frequently.

  5. Strain the liquid through a jelly bag or coarse linen cloth.

Add sugar and brandy

  1. For each gallon of liquid, add four pounds of white sugar and one quart of French brandy for every five gallons.

  2. Mix thoroughly and transfer to a clean cask that will hold it completely.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Place the cask in a cool, dry place and loosely lay the bung.

  2. Secure the cask to prevent movement, as disturbance can harm the wine.

  3. Let it ferment for two weeks or more until fermentation subsides.

  4. Bottle the wine, ensuring the corks are driven in tightly.

  5. Store the bottles on their sides, and in six months, the wine will be ready to use.

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. 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, sugars and acids that form the body and flavour of the wine.
White sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbonation in the finished wine.
French brandy
Adds alcohol strength and aroma, helping preserve the wine after fermentation.

The step that matters

Keeping the cask undisturbed during fermentation. Moving or jarring the cask can stir up sediment and interrupt the yeast's activity, which can spoil the wine's clarity and flavour. Keeping it still lets fermentation settle cleanly.

“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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