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Gooseberry Wine

A fermented beverage made from gooseberries, water, sugar, honey, cream of tartar, orange peel, lemon peel, and light brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Gooseberry Wine

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Gooseberry Wine

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large container, combine 4½ gallons of water and 5 gallons of gooseberries.

  2. Mix in 6 pounds of sugar, 4 pounds of honey, 1 ounce of cream of tartar, 1 ounce of dry orange peel, and 1 ounce of dry lemon peel.

  3. Add ½ gallon of light brandy to the mixture.

  4. Stir well and allow to ferment for six months before consuming.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Honey + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,068 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  5. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries
Provide the main fruit flavor and natural tartness that gives the wine its character.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and leaving sweetness in the wine.
Honey
Adds fermentable sugar and a rounded, floral sweetness to the finished wine.
Cream of tartar
Adds tartaric acid, adjusting acidity to keep the wine bright and balanced.
Light brandy
Raises the alcohol content, adding strength and helping preserve the finished wine.

The step that matters

Letting it ferment fully. Six months gives the yeast time to finish converting sugar into alcohol and lets the flavors mellow. Drinking it early can leave the wine sweet, cloudy, and harsh.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, honey, cream, orange, 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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