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Drink

Red Currant Avine

A fermented beverage made from currants, sugar, water, and optional raspberry juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and raspberry work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 366 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells fruity, sweet. The science ↓

Red Currant Avine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break and squeeze the currants well.

  2. Boil 1 gallon of spring water and add 6 pounds of sugar.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes, skimming the surface.

Ferment and age

  1. When nearly cold, add 1 gallon of currant juice.

  2. Pour into a spirit cask and seal tightly after fermentation subsides in 4-5 days.

  3. Age for 12 months for best flavor.

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 + raspberrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together366 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  2. Sugar + raspberrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,101 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant 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

Sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
Red currant juice
Supplies the fruit flavor and acidity, and the source of yeast for fermentation.

The step that matters

Adding the juice when nearly cold. Adding juice to water that is still hot can kill the yeast and microorganisms on the fruit, stalling fermentation. Letting the sugar syrup cool first keeps the fermentation healthy.

Swap the raspberry

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Red currantfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, currant. 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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