Why it works: Red currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Red Currant Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the must
Crush ripe, freshly picked currants and strain the juice.
Pour the juice over the sugar in a large container.
Add water until all the sugar is dissolved and mix well.
Ferment and bottle
Transfer the mixture to a strong cask and store it in a cool cellar.
After fermentation is complete, bottle the wine.
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.
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Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,156 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Red currant juice
- Provides the fruit flavor and the acidity that balances the wine's sweetness.
- Loaf sugar
- Feeds the yeast, which converts the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
The step that matters
Dissolving all the sugar. Yeast can only ferment sugar that is dissolved in the liquid. Undissolved sugar settles to the bottom and may ferment unevenly or stall, so stir until no crystals remain before the cask is sealed.
“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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