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Gooseberry Wine. No. 2

A fermented beverage made from crushed gooseberries, water, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Gooseberry Wine. No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Crush the gooseberries well.

  2. Mix the crushed gooseberries with water and let it sit for 1-2 days.

  3. Strain and squeeze the pulp to extract the liquid.

Ferment and seal

  1. Pour the liquid into a barrel and add the sugar.

  2. Stir daily until fermentation ceases.

  3. Reserve 2-3 gallons of liquid to refill the barrel as it overflows.

  4. Add a bottle of brandy to the barrel before sealing it.

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

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

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

Gooseberries
Provide the fruit flavour, natural acidity and the juice that ferments into wine.
Common loaf sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Brandy
Added before sealing to raise the alcohol content and help preserve the wine.

The step that matters

Reserve liquid to refill the barrel. As fermentation bubbles, the barrel overflows and loses liquid. Topping up with reserved liquid keeps air out of the surface, which limits spoilage by vinegar-forming bacteria and mould.

“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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