Name: To Make White and Red Currant Wine
Ingredients: 12 gallons cold soft water; 4 gallons white currants; 3 gallons red currants; 25 lbs raw sugar; 3 oz white tartar (in fine powder); 1 handful sweet briar leaves; 1 handful lavender leaves; 2 quarts spirits (or more)

Why it works: White currant and red currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

To Make White and Red Currant Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Combine cold soft water, white currants, and red currants in a large fermentation vessel.
Add raw sugar and white tartar, stirring until dissolved.
Incorporate sweet briar leaves and lavender leaves.
Pour in spirits and mix well.
Allow the mixture to ferment.

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.

White currant + red curranttop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Lavender + spirittop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together122 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Sugar + spirittop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together602 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,156 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Red currant + spirittop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

White currants: Provide the main fruit juice and flavour base of the wine.
Red currants: Add fruit juice, acidity and colour to the wine.
Raw sugar: Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.
White tartar: Adds acidity and tartness that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Spirits: Raise the alcohol content and help preserve the finished wine.

Swap the white currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red currant, sugar, lavender, spirit):

Vanillafits better
Orangefits better
Raspberryfits better
White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red currant, sugar, lavender, spirit. 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.