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Currant Wine-e, R

A fermented beverage made from currant juice, water, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Currant Wine-e, R

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wine

  1. Combine 1 gallon of currant juice with 2 gallons of water and 3½ lbs. of moist sugar.

  2. Let the mixture sit in a cask for about 2 weeks.

Fortify and seal

  1. Add 1 bottle of brandy for every 4 gallons of wine once it stops hissing.

  2. Seal the cask tightly.

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 + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

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

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

Currant juice
Provides the main fruit flavor and acidity of the wine.
Moist sugar
Feeds the fermentation and sweetens the wine as it develops.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and helps preserve the finished wine.

The step that matters

Adding the brandy. Brandy should go in only after the hissing stops, because the hissing is active fermentation. Adding spirit too early halts the yeast before it has converted much of the sugar, leaving the wine sweeter and less developed.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, 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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