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Currant Wine, Black

A fermented beverage made from ripe black currants, 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: Black currant and brandy work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 55 recipes. Both carry ethyl butyrate, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Currant Wine, Black

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Remove the stalks from the currants and place them in an earthenware bowl.

  2. Bruise the currants well with a wooden spoon, then drain off the juice and set it aside.

  3. Add the cold water to the currants and stir frequently for 2 to 3 hours.

  4. Strain the liquid and mix it with the reserved juice.

Ferment and age

  1. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved, then transfer the mixture into a cask.

  2. Once fermentation has ceased, rack off the liquid into a smaller cask.

  3. Add the brandy, bung closely, and let it sit for at least 12 months in a warm place.

  4. After 12 months, carefully drain the wine into dry bottles, cork them tightly, and store in a dry, moderately warm place.

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. Black currant + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 black currants
Provide the fruit, juice and flavour that form the body of the wine.
Preserving sugar
Feeds fermentation to produce alcohol and sweetness balancing the currant tartness.
French brandy
Raises the alcohol content, stabilising the wine and preserving its flavour during aging.

The step that matters

Rack off after fermentation has ceased. Leaving the wine on the sediment left from fermentation can cause off flavours and cloudiness, so it should be transferred cleanly into a smaller cask once fermentation has finished.

Swap the black currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Black 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.

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