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Drink

Dewberry Cordial

A sweet alcoholic beverage made from dewberries, roots, and spices, boiled and sweetened, then mixed with whiskey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Dewberry Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roots

  1. Wash the roots carefully and boil them in 5 gallons of water until reduced to 1 gallon.

  2. Strain the liquid, then boil again and skim off any foam.

Make the liquid

  1. Cook the dewberries for 10 minutes, then strain the juice.

  2. Combine the berry juice with the boiled liquid and cook for 5 minutes, skimming as needed.

  3. Add 5 pounds of sugar, allspice, ground ginger, and caraway seeds, then boil for 15 minutes while stirring slowly.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in 1 quart of whiskey.

Bottle

  1. Let it cool, strain, bottle, 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.

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. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + carawaytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Ginger + carawaytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + carawaytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Dewberries
Provide the main fruit flavor and color, released into the juice by cooking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the liqueur.
Whiskey
Acts as the spirit that preserves the liqueur and adds alcohol warmth.
Roots
Extract flavor and aroma into the water as they simmer.

The step that matters

Boiling down the roots. Reducing the roots to 1 gallon concentrates their flavor and extracts the aromatic compounds. Stopping early leaves the base weak, and the later additions cannot make up for that.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, allspice, ginger. 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.

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