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 juice
Extract the juice from the cherries and strain it through a cloth.
Sweeten the juice to your taste and boil it until clear.
Steep
In a jar, combine the stoned cherries, pricked cherries, and bruised kernels.
Add the white sugar and cover with brandy.
Let the mixture stand for one month.
Bottle
Bottle the cordial, cork, and seal tightly.
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 flavour, juice, and colour for the cordial.
- White sugar
- Sweetens the cordial and helps preserve the fruit during steeping.
- Brandy
- Extracts flavour from the fruit and preserves the cordial as it stands.
- Kernels
- Add a subtle almond-like aroma to the finished cordial.
The step that matters
Let the mixture stand for one month. Flavour from the cherries, kernels, and brandy builds slowly as the alcohol and sugar draw it out. Bottling early leaves the cordial thin and sharp.
“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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