Why it works: Sugar and whisky are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,008 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Directions
Combine six pounds of cherries, three pounds of sugar, and one gallon of whisky.
Shake the jar often for the first three weeks.
Bottle the cordial.
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. See the original page.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Sugar + whiskytop 12% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together1,008 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cherries
- Provide fruit flavor and aroma, and release juice that mixes with the whisky.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps draw juice from the cherries to form the cordial.
- Whisky
- Acts as the alcoholic base that extracts and preserves the cherry flavor.
The step that matters
Shaking the jar for the first three weeks. Regular shaking keeps the sugar dissolving and spreads the cherry juice through the whisky, so the sugar does not settle at the bottom and the flavor extracts evenly.
“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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