Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Cherry Cordial
Ingredients
Directions
Make the cherry juice
Extract the juice from ripe Morella cherries and strain through a cloth.
Sweeten the juice to your taste and boil until perfectly clear.
Bottle the cordial
In each bottle, add ½ cup of brandy, then cork and seal tightly.
Make the cherry brandy
For the cherry brandy, stone half of the cherries and prick the rest.
Add the kernels of half the stoned cherries to a jar with the cherries and sugar.
Cover with brandy and let it stand for one month.
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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Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together11,939 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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
What each ingredient does
- Morella cherries
- Provide the main fruit juice that gives the cordial its flavour and colour.
- White sugar
- Sweetens the juice and helps preserve the cordial.
- Brandy
- Adds alcohol that preserves the cordial and carries its flavour.
The step that matters
Boil the sweetened juice until perfectly clear. Boiling sweetened juice dissolves the sugar fully and coagulates and skims off cloudy particles, so the cordial stays clear rather than hazy once bottled.
“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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