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Black Currant Avine

Fermented beverage made from black currant juice, spring water, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Black Currant Avine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Combine 3 quarts of black currant juice with 3 quarts of unboiled spring water.

  2. Add 1 pound of brown sugar for each quart of the mixture.

  3. Transfer to a spirit or wine cask, reserving a little juice to top off later.

Ferment

  1. Keep the cask in a warm place to allow fermentation.

  2. Once fermentation subsides, skim off the refuse and refill with the reserved juice.

Age and bottle

  1. Seal the cask tightly and let it age for 9 months.

  2. When bottling, strain the liquid through wet flannel until clear.

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 + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Black currant juice
Supplies the main flavour and fruit acidity that give the wine its character.
Brown sugar
Feeds the yeast, which turns the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.

The step that matters

Refill the cask with reserved juice after fermentation subsides. Once fermentation slows, the cask should be kept full. A full container leaves little air above the liquid, which limits oxidation and the growth of spoilage microbes during ageing.

“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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