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Drink

Fincastle Currant Wine

A sweet wine made by fermenting ripe currants with water and sugar, then bottling with loaf sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

Fincastle Currant Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather full ripe currants on a dry day and remove them from the stalks.

  2. Crush the currants well with your hands, leaving none whole.

  3. Add 1 quart of water for every 2 pounds of currants and stir well.

  4. Let the mixture stand for 3 hours.

  5. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Make the wine

  1. Add 1 pound of sugar for every 3 pounds of currants and stir well.

  2. Boil the mixture, skimming off any scum that rises.

  3. Pour the liquid into a clean cask after it has cooled for 16 hours.

Age and bottle

  1. If making 10 gallons, let it stand for 3 weeks; for 20 or 30 gallons, let it stand for 1 month.

  2. Once clear, add a lump of loaf sugar to each bottle, cork tightly, and store in a cool place.

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. 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

Currants
Provide the main fruit flavour and acidity that give the wine its character.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol.

The step that matters

Pour into a clean cask after cooling. Cooling lets the liquid settle before transfer, and a clean cask keeps unwanted microbes from spoiling the wine during the long standing period.

“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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