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White Currant Wine

A fermented beverage made from sugar, water, white currant juice, lemon juice, lemon rind, yeast, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

White Currant Wine

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the sugar in water for 30 minutes and skim well.

  2. When nearly cold, add the white currant juice, lemon juice, lemon rind, and yeast.

  3. Pour the mixture into a brandy cask.

  4. Dissolve the isinglass in a little of the liquor and add it to the cask.

  5. When fermentation ceases in 4 to 5 days, seal the cask and bottle the wine in February.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. White currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Sugar + white curranttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together59 recipes

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Fine moist sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and sweetness in the finished wine.
White currant juice
Supplies the fruit flavour and acidity that give the wine its character.
Yeast
Converts the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Isinglass
Helps clarify the wine by collecting suspended particles so it becomes clear.

The step that matters

Cooling the sugar syrup before adding the juice and yeast. If the boiled syrup is still hot, it can kill the yeast before fermentation starts. Letting it cool nearly to room temperature protects the yeast so it can convert the sugar into alcohol.

Swap the white currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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