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Drink

Black Currant Wine

A fermented beverage made from black currants, water, brandy, yeast, and optionally sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and brandy work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 55 recipes. Both carry ethyl butyrate, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Black Currant Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Start the fermentation

  1. Crush the black currants.

  2. Combine the crushed currants with water in a large container.

  3. Add brandy and yeast. Stir well.

  4. Cover the mixture.

  5. Let the mixture ferment for 8 days.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the wine.

  2. Cork it tightly.

Second method: juice and sugar

  1. Boil the fruit.

  2. Strain the juice.

  3. Mix the juice with equal parts water.

  4. Add 1 pound of sugar for each quart of the juice, then ferment.

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. Black currant + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  2. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Brandy and sugar 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

Black currants
Provide the main fruit flavour, acidity and colour of the wine.
Brandy
Adds alcohol that strengthens the wine and helps preserve it.
Yeast
Converts the sugars in the fruit into alcohol during fermentation.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness to the second method.

Swap the black currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Black currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, sugar. 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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