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Black Currant Wine, Very Fine

A fermented black currant wine sweetened with sugar and aged with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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

Ferment

  1. Combine black currant juice and sugar in a fermentation vessel.

  2. Allow the mixture to ferment in a dry room until fermentation is complete.

  3. Skim off any refuse after fermentation.

Fortify and age

  1. Add reserved liquor to fill up the vessel.

  2. Once fermentation has ceased, mix in brandy.

  3. Seal the container tightly and let it age for 9 months.

Bottle and store

  1. After aging, bottle the wine and strain it through a jelly bag until clear.

  2. Store the bottled wine for 10 to 12 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 main fruit flavour and acidity for the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and leaving some sweetness.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol level, stopping fermentation and adding aroma and stability.

The step that matters

Add the brandy only after fermentation has ceased. Alcohol added too early stops the yeast before it has converted the sugar, leaving the wine overly sweet and less stable. Waiting until fermentation finishes lets the yeast complete its work before the spirit is mixed in.

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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