Name: Strawberry Cordial
Ingredients: 1 quart strawberries; 1 pound loaf sugar; 1 tablespoon brandy per large spoonful of juice

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 ↓

Strawberry Cordial

Ingredients

1 quart strawberries
1 pound loaf sugar
1 tablespoon brandy per large spoonful of juice

Directions

Macerate

Sift 1 pound of loaf sugar over 1 quart of strawberries in a deep pan.
Let it stand for 24 hours.
Strain the liquid from the fruit.

Finish and store

Add 1 tablespoon of brandy for each large spoonful of juice.
Bottle the mixture 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.

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

Strawberries: Provide the fruit juice that forms the base of the cordial and carries its flavour.
Loaf sugar: Draws liquid out of the fruit and sweetens the juice, helping preserve it.
Brandy: Adds alcohol that helps preserve the cordial and rounds out its flavour.

“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.