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Currant Wine

A fermented beverage made from ripe currants, water, sugar, and rectified wine spirit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Spirit and wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 701 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Currant Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Bruise the ripe currants and strip them from the stem.

  2. Add ½ gallon of boiled and cooled water to every gallon of currant pulp.

  3. Let the mixture ferment in a tub for 24 hours.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve without pressing it.

Sweeten and fortify

  1. Stir in 2½ pounds of white sugar for every gallon of liquor.

  2. Add ¼ quart of best rectified spirit of wine for every 6 gallons.

Age and bottle

  1. Let it stand for 6 weeks, then bottle it.

  2. If not very fine, empty into other bottles, let it stand for 2 weeks, and then rack it off into smaller bottles.

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. Spirit + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together701 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Currant + spirittop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together34 recipes
  4. Sugar + spirittop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

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

  5. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Ripe currants
Provide the fruit flavour, acidity and colour that define the wine.
White sugar
Feeds the fermentation and adds sweetness to balance the tart currant juice.
Rectified spirit of wine
Raises the alcohol content, helping preserve the wine and keep it stable.

The step that matters

Strain without pressing. Pressing the pulp forces fine solids and bitter or cloudy compounds into the liquor, making the wine harder to clear. Letting the juice drain on its own keeps the finished wine cleaner and less astringent.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, spirit, wine. 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.

More currant wine recipes

Black 28Red 22Sauce 9White 8 See all 158 →

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