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Drink

Strawberry Cordial

A sweet alcoholic beverage made by infusing apple brandy with strawberries and sweetening with sugar or syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. 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 another 4 quarts of strawberries and let it stand for another 24 hours.

  5. Repeat the pressing process.

Sweeten and blend

  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 whipped egg white until combined.

  3. Once the syrup is cold, mix 1 pint of syrup with 1 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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple brandy + syruptop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes
  5. Egg + syruptop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,995 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Apple brandy
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour and colour from the strawberries.
Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, aroma and colour to the cordial.
Sugar
Sweetens the cordial and, dissolved in water, forms the syrup.
Egg white
Whipped into the syrup to help clarify it by binding impurities that rise as a foam.

The step that matters

Pressing the mixture through the cotton bag. Pressing too hard or too early can force pulp and fine solids through the cloth, leaving the cordial cloudy. Letting gravity drain the liquid first keeps it clearer.

“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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