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Black Currant Wine, Very Fine

A fermented black currant wine made with sugar, water, 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 ↓

Black Currant Wine, Very Fine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and ferment

  1. Combine the black currant juice and unboiled water in a cask.

  2. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Place the cask in a warm, dry room to allow fermentation.

  4. Once fermentation is complete, skim off any refuse and fill up with reserved liquor.

  5. When fermentation ceases, add the brandy to the wine.

Age and bottle

  1. Seal the cask and let it sit for nine months.

  2. After nine months, bottle the wine and strain through a jelly bag until clear.

  3. Store the bottled wine for ten to twelve months before consuming.

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

Black currant juice
Provides the fruit flavour, acidity and colour that define the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and leaving some sweetness behind.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content, stopping fermentation and helping preserve the wine.

The step that matters

Add the brandy only when fermentation ceases. Brandy added too early halts the yeast before it has converted the sugar, leaving the wine sweeter and less fully fermented than intended.

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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