Name: Raspberry or Currant Wine
Ingredients: 3 pints of fruit (raspberries or currants); 1 quart of water; 1 pound of sugar (good quality Lisbon sugar); brandy or wine (for bottling)

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 ↓

Raspberry or Currant Wine

Ingredients

3 pints of fruit (raspberries or currants)
1 quart of water
1 pound of sugar (good quality Lisbon sugar)
brandy or wine (for bottling)

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Clear the fruit from any mold or bad spots.
Bruise the fruit and mix with water.
After 24 hours, strain the mixture.

Make the wine

Add 1 pound of sugar for every quart of liquid.
Place the mixture in a large pan and remove any scum that rises after 3-4 days.
Transfer the liquid to a barrel.

Bottle

For bottling, add a spoonful of brandy or a glass of wine to each bottle.

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.

Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Raspberries or currants: Provide the fruit flavor, aroma and natural sugars that the wine is made from.
Sugar: Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
Water: Dilutes the fruit and sugar to form the liquid that ferments.