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Drink

Raspberey or Currant Wine

A fermented beverage made by macerating raspberries or currants with water and sugar, then clarifying and aging.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Raspberey or Currant Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove any moldy or bad fruit from the raspberries or currants.

  2. Bruise the fruit.

  3. Mix the bruised fruit with 1 quart of water.

  4. Let the mixture sit for 24 hours.

  5. Strain the liquid.

Add sugar and ferment

  1. Add 1 pound of sugar for every quart of liquid.

  2. If using white currants, substitute with lump sugar.

  3. Place the fruit mixture in a large pan.

  4. Remove any scum that rises after 3 to 4 days.

  5. If you don't have enough fruit to fill the barrel at once, continue to add the mixture as more fruit ripens.

Alternative method

  1. For an alternative method, combine 5 quarts of currants and 1 pint of raspberries with 2 gallons of water.

  2. Squeeze and break the fruit.

  3. Rub the fruit through a fine wire sieve.

  4. Add 4 pounds of good quality Lisbon sugar for every gallon of liquid.

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

Raspberries
Provide the main flavour and aroma of the wine.
Currants
Add tartness and acidity that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Feeds fermentation and sets the sweetness and alcohol level of the wine.

The step that matters

Remove scum that rises after 3 to 4 days. Scum is a sign of unwanted surface microbes and debris. Skimming it off early keeps the fermenting liquid clean and reduces the risk of off-flavours spoiling the wine.

“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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