Name: Black Currant Cordial
Ingredients: 4 quarts black currants, picked from stems and slightly bruised; 1 gallon best whiskey; 3 pounds loaf sugar; 1 pound best cloves, slightly bruised

Why it works: Black currant and clove share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 40 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Black Currant Cordial

Ingredients

4 quarts black currants, picked from stems and slightly bruised
1 gallon best whiskey
3 pounds loaf sugar
1 pound best cloves, slightly bruised

Directions

Steep

Combine black currants and whiskey in a jar.
Let it sit for four months, shaking the jar occasionally.

Finish and bottle

After four months, drain and strain the liquid.
Add loaf sugar and bruised cloves to the strained liquid.
Bottle the mixture well and seal.

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.

Black currant + clovetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together40 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together393 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together17,182 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Black currants: Provide the main fruit flavour and colour as they steep in the whiskey.
Whiskey: Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the currants and preserves the liquid.
Loaf sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the fruit and spirit.
Cloves: Add warm, aromatic spice flavour to the finished liqueur.