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Drink

Sham Champagne

A fermented beverage made from gooseberries, sugar, brandy, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Sham Champagne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Combine gooseberries and water in a container.

  2. Let it stand for 3 days, stirring twice daily.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Add 3 pounds of sugar for every gallon of juice.

Age and bottle

  1. Transfer to a barrel.

  2. Add 1 quart of brandy and a little isinglass for every 20 quarts of liquor.

  3. Let it stand for 6 months.

  4. Bottle 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 and acidity that give the wine its character.
Sugar
Feeds the fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished drink.
Brandy
Fortifies the wine, raising alcohol content and stabilising it against further fermentation.
Isinglass
Acts as a fining agent that helps clear the liquor as it settles.

The step that matters

Adding brandy and isinglass. Brandy stops fermentation by raising alcohol content, so the sugar left in the wine stays sweet. Isinglass helps suspended particles settle, clearing the liquor. Adding these at the wrong time or in the wrong amount can leave the drink fermenting, cloudy, or too dry.

“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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