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Drink

Strawberry Cordial

A cordial made by infusing apple brandy with strawberries, then sweetening with sugar or syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple brandy and sugar work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 45 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberry Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the strawberries

  1. Combine 1 gallon of apple brandy with 4 quarts of strawberries in a large container.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

  3. Press the mixture through a cotton bag to extract the liquid.

  4. Add 4 more quarts of strawberries to the mixture.

  5. Let the mixture stand for another 24 hours.

  6. Press the mixture through a cotton bag again to extract the liquid.

Sweeten and finish

  1. For each quart of cordial, add 1 pound of sugar or sweeten with syrup.

  2. To make the syrup, boil 2 pounds of sugar with 1 pint of water and the white of 1 egg until combined.

  3. Once cooled, mix 1 pint of syrup into each quart of cordial.

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. Apple brandy + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Apple brandy
Serves as the base spirit that extracts and preserves the strawberry flavour.
Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour as they steep in the brandy.
Sugar
Sweetens the cordial and, dissolved into syrup, balances the alcohol.
Egg white
Clarifies the syrup, as it coagulates and collects impurities when boiled.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup with egg white. The egg white must be fully combined and the syrup boiled so it coagulates and lifts impurities. Skipping this leaves the syrup cloudy, and the cordial should be cooled before the syrup is mixed in.

“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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