Name: Currant Wine
Ingredients: 3 gallons cold water; 1 gallon currant juice; 2 tablespoons yeast; 4 pounds loaf sugar

Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

Currant Wine

Ingredients

3 gallons cold water
1 gallon currant juice
2 tablespoons yeast
4 pounds loaf sugar

Directions

Gather ripe currants and squeeze out the juice.
Combine 1 gallon of currant juice with 3 gallons of cold water and 2 tablespoons of yeast.
Let the mixture ferment for 24 hours.
Strain the mixture.
Add 4 pounds of loaf sugar for every gallon of liquid and stir well.
Transfer to a clean cask and seal the cask.
Let it stand until clear.
Bottle.

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.

Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,256 recipes

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

Yeast: Starts fermentation, converting the sugars in the juice into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Loaf sugar: Feeds the yeast during fermentation and sweetens the finished wine.
Currant juice: Provides the main fruit flavour, acidity and the sugars that the yeast ferments.

“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.