Skip to main content
Drink

At Lowest Prices

A cordial made from blackberries, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Trinity Church (Reno, Nev.). Woman's Guild · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,189 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

At Lowest Prices

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Wash the blackberries and boil for a few minutes.

  2. When cool, press the juice out and strain.

Sweeten and flavour

  1. Add a pound of crushed sugar to a pint of juice; if the berries are very acidic, add more sugar.

  2. Boil about five minutes with cloves and cinnamon tied in a bag, using more cinnamon than cloves.

Finish

  1. Skim, strain, and add a pint of brandy to four pints of juice.

By Trinity Church (Reno, Nev.). Woman's Guild. 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. 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.

  1. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Juice
Forms the liquid base and carries the blackberry flavour and colour.
Crushed sugar
Balances the fruit's acidity and adds sweetness.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour during the boil.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma that complements the blackberries.

The step that matters

Adding sugar to a pint of juice. Blackberries vary in acidity, so the sugar needs adjusting to taste. Sugar balances sourness and adds sweetness, so tasting before finishing prevents a cordial that is too tart or cloying.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, sugar, butter, cream, pepper, egg, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  2. Cardamomabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Tarragonabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, sugar, butter, cream, pepper, egg, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Cinnamon TinctureCinnamon Tincture10 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes