Why it works: Spirit and wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 701 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓
Currant Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pulp
Strip and bruise the currants in a mortar.
Mix 2 quarts of boiled and cooled water with every gallon of pulp and let it ferment in a tub for 24 hours.
Run the mixture through a hair sieve without touching it.
Blend and age
Add 2.5 pounds of white sugar for every gallon of liquor and stir well.
Transfer to a vessel and add 1 quart of rectified spirit of wine for every 6 gallons.
Let it stand for 6 weeks, then bottle it.
If not clear, empty into other bottles, let stand for 2 weeks, and rack off into smaller bottles.
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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Spirit + winetop 9% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together701 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
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Currant + winetop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,323 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
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Currant + spirittop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together34 recipes
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Sugar + spirittop 25% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together602 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,256 recipes
Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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
- Full ripe currants
- Provide the main fruit flavour, acidity and colour for the wine.
- White sugar
- Sweetens the wine and provides the sugar that fermentation converts to alcohol.
- Rectified spirit of wine
- Adds alcohol, which stabilises the wine and helps it keep.
The step that matters
Running the mixture through the sieve without touching it. Pressing or squeezing the pulp pushes solids and cloudy material through the sieve, which makes the wine harder to clear. Letting it drain by gravity keeps the liquor clearer.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, spirit, wine):
- Vanillafits better
- Applefits better
- Orangefits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, spirit, wine. 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.
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