Why it works: Currant and peas work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓
Currant Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Combine 1 quart of currant juice with 3 peas of sugar.
Add enough water to make a total of 1 gallon.
Stir well to dissolve the sugar.
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.
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Currant + peastop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,256 recipes
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Peas + sugartop 31% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,928 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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
- Currant juice
- Provides the main fruit flavor and tartness of the wine.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the currant juice.
Swap the peas
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (currant, sugar):
- Almondfits better
- Chestnutfits better
- Pistachiofits about as well
- Peasthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against currant, sugar. 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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