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Gooseberry Wine

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Gooseberry Wine

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 ↓

Gooseberry Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Bruise the gooseberries in a tub.

  2. Add 1 gallon of cold spring water to the bruised fruit.

  3. Stir the mixture.

  4. Let it stand for 24 hours.

  5. Strain the mash through a fine sieve or grass cloth.

Make the wine

  1. Add 4 pounds of white loaf sugar to the juice.

  2. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  3. Pour the mixture into a cask.

  4. Add 2 quarts of brandy to the cask.

  5. Add 0.5 ounces of isinglass to the cask.

  6. Set the cask in a cool place, leaving the bung out until fermentation nearly ceases.

Bottle

  1. Draw off the wine into bottles.

  2. Cork the bottles tightly immediately.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 juice and flavour that form the body of the wine.
White loaf sugar
Supplies the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and sweetness that remains in the finished wine.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content, helping preserve the wine and stabilise it.
Isinglass
Acts as a fining agent that clarifies the wine by settling suspended particles.

The step that matters

Leaving the bung out during fermentation. The cask must be left unsealed so carbon dioxide produced by fermentation can escape. Sealing it too early can build pressure and burst the cask or bottles.

“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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