Name: Brandy Cocktail
Ingredients: 5 gallons 4th proof brandy; 5 gallons water; 1 quart Stoughton Bitters; 1 quart gum syrup; 1 bottle curacova

Why it works: Brandy and syrup work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 561 recipes. The science ↓

Brandy Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Mix all ingredients together.
Run the mixture through a canton flannel filter, then bottle the filtered cocktail.

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.

Brandy + syruptop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together561 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Brandy: Provides the alcoholic base and the main spirit flavour of the cocktail.
Gum syrup: Adds sweetness and a smooth, rounded body to balance the spirit.
Stoughton bitters: Adds aromatic bitterness and spice notes that give the cocktail depth.
Curacao (in the method): Adds orange-citrus aroma and a touch of sweetness to the blend.

“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.