Name: Currant Wine
Ingredients: npe currants (stripped from the stem); ½ gallon water (boiled and cooled) per gallon of pulp; 2½ pounds white sugar per gallon of liquor; 1 quart best rectified spirit of wine per 6 gallons

Why it works: Spirit and wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 701 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Currant Wine

Ingredients

npe currants (stripped from the stem)
½ gallon water (boiled and cooled) per gallon of pulp
2½ pounds white sugar per gallon of liquor
1 quart best rectified spirit of wine per 6 gallons

Directions

Prepare the pulp

Bruise the currants and add to every gallon of pulp.
Add ½ gallon of boiled and cooled water to the pulp.
Let the mixture ferment in a tub for 24 hours.

Sweeten and fortify

Strain the mixture through a fine sieve without pressing it.
Stir in 2½ pounds of white sugar for every gallon of liquor.
Add 1 quart of best rectified spirit of wine for every 6 gallons.

Bottle and clarify

After 6 weeks, bottle the wine.
If the wine is not clear, transfer it to other bottles and let it stand for 2 weeks before racking it off into smaller bottles.

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.

Spirit + winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together701 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,323 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Currant + spirittop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together34 recipes
Sugar + spirittop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together602 recipes

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

Npe currants: Provide the fruit flavour, acidity and the juice that ferments into the wine.
White sugar: Feeds the fermentation and provides the sweetness that balances the currants' acidity.
Rectified spirit of wine: Raises the alcohol content, stabilising the wine and helping it keep.