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Drink

Raspberry or Currant Wine

A fruit wine made from raspberries or currants, sugar, water, and optionally brandy or wine for bottling.

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 ↓

Raspberry or Currant Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Bruise the fruit and soak it in water for 24 hours.

  2. Strain the liquor.

Ferment

  1. Add 1 pound of sugar for every quart of liquid.

  2. Place the mixture in a large pan.

  3. Remove any scum that rises over the next 3-4 days.

  4. Transfer the liquor to a barrel.

Bottle

  1. Bottle it after about two months, adding a spoonful of brandy or a glass of wine to each bottle.

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

Raspberries or currants
Provide the flavour and aroma that define the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
Brandy or wine
Added at bottling to strengthen and preserve the wine.

The step that matters

Removing the scum. Scum that rises during the first days is wild material and residue from the fruit. Skimming it off keeps the liquor clean so it ferments evenly and does not pick up off-flavours.

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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