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Drink

Currant Wink

A sweetened currant wine made by boiling currants with water and sugar, then straining and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

Currant Wink

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Strip the currants into a covered earthenware vessel.

  2. Boil the water and sugar together, skimming off any foam.

  3. Pour the boiling mixture over the currants.

Strain and settle

  1. Let it stand for 48 hours, then strain through a flannel bag back into the vessel.

  2. Allow it to settle for 14 days 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 + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Currants
Provide the fruit flavour and the natural sugars and acids that ferment into the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide, and adds sweetness.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling syrup over the currants. The boiling water and sugar mixture sterilises the fruit and the vessel's surface, reducing wild microbes that could spoil the wine before the intended yeast takes over. Skimming foam first removes impurities that would otherwise cloud or taint the liquid.

“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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