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Vin De Groseilles Noires — Black Currant Wine

A wine made by macerating black currants in brandy, then sweetening with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Vin De Groseilles Noires — Black Currant Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate the fruit

  1. Pick and bruise the black currants, then place them in a deep basin.

  2. Add the brandy and optional spices, then set the jar in a warm place for 2 months.

Strain and bottle

  1. After 2 months, strain the liquid, pressing the currants to extract all the juice.

  2. Return the juice to the jar and add the sugar, stirring until fully dissolved.

  3. Strain the mixture through paper and bottle it.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Black currant + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together28 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Black currant + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together40 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Brandy + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 currants
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and juice for the wine.
Brandy
Extracts flavour from the fruit and raises the alcohol content, helping preserve the wine.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the currants.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (black currant, brandy, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against black currant, brandy, cinnamon, sugar. 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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