Skip to main content
Drink

Currant Champagne

A fermented beverage made from sugar, water, white and red currants, yeast, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: White currant and red currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Currant Champagne

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan.

  2. Skim and boil until it forms a clear syrup.

Ferment

  1. Pour the syrup over the stripped currants.

  2. Let it stand for 1.5 hours.

  3. Stir in the yeast.

  4. Let it sit for 2 days, stirring frequently.

Strain and fine

  1. Pass the mixture through a coarse bag into a small cask.

  2. Fine the liquid with ¼ ounce of isinglass.

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. White currant + red curranttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Sugar + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and the sugar that the yeast ferments into alcohol and carbonation.
White currants
Contribute juice, flavour and acidity to the wine.
Red currants
Contribute juice, colour, flavour and acidity to the wine.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the fermentation.
Isinglass
A fining agent that draws suspended particles out of the liquid, clearing it.

The step that matters

Let it sit for 2 days, stirring frequently. Fermentation must proceed steadily while the yeast converts sugar to alcohol; frequent stirring keeps the yeast in contact with the sugar and the pulp evenly mixed, so the fermentation does not stall or spoil unevenly.

Swap the white currant

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

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, red currant. 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.

You might also like

Black Currant CordialBlack Currant Cordial11 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes