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Currant Wine

A fermented beverage made from ripe currants, water, sugar, brandy, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Currant Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the must

  1. Mash the ripe currants with your hands.

  2. Add 3 pints of water to every quart of pulp and mix well.

  3. Let the mixture stand until fermentation is complete.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

Sweeten and age

  1. Add 3 pounds of sugar for every gallon of liquid and ensure it is fully dissolved.

  2. Transfer the liquid to a cask and add a little dissolved isinglass.

  3. For every 10 gallons, add 1 pint of brandy.

  4. Seal the cask and let it age for one 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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

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

Ripe currants
Provide the main fruit flavour and acidity that give the wine its character.
Sugar
Feeds fermentation and adds sweetness to balance the tart currant juice.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and helps keep the wine stable during ageing.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand until fermentation is complete. Fermentation turns sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Stopping too early leaves sugar unconverted, so the wine can stay sweet and may keep fermenting in the cask.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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.

More currant wine recipes

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