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Drink

Cherry Bounce. — a Cordial

A cordial made by infusing cherries and brandy, then sweetening with spiced syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and sugar 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 ↓

Cherry Bounce. — a Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Steep the cherries

  1. Fill a jug with half morellas and half wild cherries.

  2. Pour in enough brandy to cover the cherries and wet the cork.

  3. Seal the jug tightly and let it sit for six months.

Make the syrup and bottle

  1. Boil a thick syrup using loaf sugar and spices to your taste.

  2. Once the syrup is cold, fill bottles two-thirds with the cherry brandy.

  3. Top off the bottles with the spiced syrup and cork them well.

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. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Brandy and sugar 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

Ripe wild cherries
Provide the main fruit flavour and aroma that infuse into the brandy.
French brandy
Extracts flavour from the cherries and acts as the preserving alcohol.
Loaf sugar
Makes the thick syrup that sweetens and rounds out the finished drink.

The step that matters

Sealing the jug for six months. A tight seal keeps air out and alcohol in, so the cherries steep slowly without spoiling or evaporating. Keeping the cork wet with brandy helps maintain that seal.

“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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