Name: Red Gooseberry Wine
Ingredients: 36 pounds very ripe gooseberries; 3 gallons boiling water; 12 pounds good moist sugar

Red Gooseberry Wine

Ingredients

36 pounds very ripe gooseberries
3 gallons boiling water
12 pounds good moist sugar

Directions

Add the gooseberries to the boiling water and let them stand for 24 hours.
Strain the mixture and add the sugar, stirring and skimming for another 24 hours.
Transfer the mixture into a cask to ferment.
Bottle the wine after 4 months.

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries: Provide the fruit flavour, acidity and juice that the wine is made from.
Sugar: Feeds the fermentation and adds sweetness that balances the fruit's acidity.

“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.