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Drink

To Make British Champagne

A fermented beverage made from gooseberries, water, sugar, 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 ↓

To Make British Champagne

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Crush the gooseberries with a mallet in a wooden bowl.

  2. Add 1 gallon of water and let it stand for 2 days, stirring well.

  3. Squeeze the mixture through a hop sieve.

Ferment

  1. Measure the liquid and add 3.5 pounds of loaf sugar, mixing well. Let it stand for 1 day.

  2. Add 1 bottle of the best brandy to the cask.

  3. Leave the cask open for 5-6 weeks, skimming off the scum as it rises.

  4. Seal the cask and let it stand for 1 year before bottling.

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
Supply the fruit flavour and the natural sugars and acids that the mixture works from.
Loaf sugar
Provides sugar that yeast converts to alcohol and carbonation during fermentation.
Brandy
Adds spirit strength and aroma, raising the alcohol content of the finished drink.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum while the cask stands open. Scum that forms on the surface can carry spoilage microbes and off-flavours, so removing it as it rises keeps the fermenting liquid clean.

“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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