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Currant Wine, Red

A fermented wine made from ripe red currants, sugar, water, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and brandy work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 105 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Currant Wine, Red

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Remove the stalks from the currants and place them in an earthenware bowl.

  2. Bruise the currants well with a wooden spoon and drain off the juice.

  3. Add the water to the berries and let it stand for 2 to 3 hours, stirring occasionally.

  4. Strain the liquid from the berries into the juice and add 2½ lbs of sugar.

  5. Stir occasionally until the sugar is dissolved, then pour the mixture into a cask, filling it three-quarters full.

Ferment

  1. Bung the cask closely, placing a vent peg near the top, and let it sit for 1 month at about 65°F (18°C).

  2. Dissolve the remaining sugar in a small amount of warm water and mix it with the cask contents.

  3. Replace the bung and let the cask remain undisturbed for 6 weeks.

Mature and bottle

  1. Drain the wine into a clean, dry cask, add the brandy, and let it stand for about 6 months in a dry, warm place.

  2. Bottle and cork tightly. The wine may be used at once but will improve if kept for at least 12 months.

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. Red currant + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Ripe red currants
Provide the juice, acidity and fruit flavour that the wine is built on.
Loaf sugar or preserving sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and sets the wine's sweetness and alcohol level.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and adds warmth and body to the finished wine.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar in two parts. Sugar added in stages keeps fermentation steady. Adding it all at once can overwhelm the yeast or leave the wine too sweet, so the second portion is stirred in after the first has begun to work.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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