Why it works: Red currant and black currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 72 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓
Cherries
Ingredients
Directions
Select large sweet cherries for bottling.
For tart cherries, add extra sugar to taste.
Combine equal portions of sweet cherries with red currants, raspberries, strawberries, and black currants.
Use a cherry stoner if desired for stoneless cherries.
Sterilize the cherries in water or brandy for preservation.
If using stoneless cherries, bottle the stones with water, sterilize, and strain the liquid for later use.
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.
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Red currant + black curranttop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together72 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
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Brandy + red curranttop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together105 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
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Brandy + black curranttop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together55 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).
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Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together11,939 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + black curranttop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together393 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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
Swap the red currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy, black currant):
- Vanillafits better
- Red currantthe original
- Applefits about as well
- Raspberryfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, black currant. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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