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Drink

Cherry Bounce

A cherry liqueur made by soaking cherries in whisky, then mixing with a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Whisky and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,008 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cherry Bounce

Ingredients

Directions

Steep the cherries

  1. Add enough whisky to cover 1 gallon of wild cherries and let soak for 2 to 3 weeks.

  2. Drain off the liquor.

Extract and blend

  1. Mash the cherries without breaking the stones and strain through a jelly bag.

  2. Combine the strained cherry juice with the drained liquor.

Sweeten and bottle

  1. Make a syrup by boiling 1/2 cup of water with 1 pound of white sugar for every 2 quarts of liquor.

  2. Stir well, bottle, and tightly cork.

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. Whisky + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,008 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Wild cherries
Provide the fruit flavour and colour that the whisky draws out during soaking.
Whisky
Extracts flavour from the cherries and acts as the preserving alcohol in the finished liquor.
White sugar
Sweetens the liquor and balances the tartness of the cherry juice.

The step that matters

Mashing without breaking the stones. Cracked pits can release bitter, almond-like compounds into the liquor, so the cherries should be crushed gently to free the juice while keeping the stones whole.

“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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