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Drink

Mixed Fruit Wine

A wine made by fermenting currants, gooseberries, and other fruits with water and sugar, finished with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Mixed Fruit Wine

40 pints of juice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the first wine

  1. Extract juice from 3 sieves of white currants and 2 sieves of red gooseberries to yield 40 pints.

  2. Add 2 gallons of water and 3.5 pounds of sugar to each gallon of juice.

  3. Ferment the mixture.

Make the second wine

  1. Use equal parts of white, red, and black currants, cherries, and raspberries for the second mixture.

  2. For every 4 pounds of bruised fruit, add 1 gallon of water.

  3. Steep the bruised fruit for 3 days.

  4. Press the steeped fruit.

  5. Add 3 pounds of yellow sugar to each gallon of liquor.

  6. Ferment the liquor.

Finish and fine

  1. Add 2 pints of brandy for every 9 gallons of finished wine.

  2. Dissolve 0.5 ounce of isinglass in 1 pint of water.

  3. Add the isinglass mixture to each 9 gallons of wine.

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

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

  3. White currant + brandytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Sugar + black curranttop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

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

  5. White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together59 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

White currants
Provide the main juice and tartness that give the wine its base flavour.
Red gooseberries
Add acidity and fruity flavour to the juice base.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and sweetness left in the wine.
Cherries
Add fruit flavour and body to the second mixture.
Raspberries
Add aroma and fruity flavour to the second mixture.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and helps preserve the finished wine.

Swap the white currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Red currantfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, black currant, 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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