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Blackberry Brandy

A spirit infused with blackberries, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Blackberry Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate the fruit

  1. Combine 7 pounds of blackberries with 3 quarts of double-proof spirit.

  2. Let it sit for ten weeks.

  3. Strain and filter the mixture.

Infuse and blend

  1. Infuse 1 quart of double-proof spirit with ½ ounce of cloves, ¼ grated nutmeg, and ½ ounce of cinnamon.

  2. Filter this infusion and mix it with the blackberry spirit.

  3. Add 1 quart of water and ½ pound of sugar to the mixture.

  4. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Spirit + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Blackberries
Supply the main fruit flavour and colour the spirit over the ten-week steep.
Double-proof spirit
Extracts flavour from the fruit and spices and preserves the mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and rounds out the sharpness of the fruit and spirit.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes to the infused spirit.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma to the infused spirit.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spirit, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Clovethe original
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against spirit, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar. 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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