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Black Currant Wine

A fermented wine made from 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: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Black Currant Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Jam the currants well in a container.

  2. Add boiling water to the currants and let them stand for 3 to 4 days, stirring daily.

  3. Strain the mixture to obtain the juice.

Ferment

  1. Mix 3.5 pounds of sugar into each gallon of juice until dissolved.

  2. Let the mixture stand until the foam breaks.

  3. Transfer the mixture into a cask and let it stand for 2 weeks.

Fortify and age

  1. Add 0.5 pint of brandy for every gallon of wine and seal the cask tightly.

  2. Allow the wine to age for 6 months before bottling.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

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

Currants
Provide the fruit flavor, acidity and natural sugars that the wine is built on.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and sweetens the finished wine.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content, stabilising the wine and preserving it during aging.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. 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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