Skip to main content
Drink

Blackberry Cordial

A homemade blackberry cordial made with blackberry juice, sugar, whisky, and optional spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Blackberry Cordial

Why it works: Blackberry and whisky work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Blackberry Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a pot, combine 1 quart of blackberry juice and ½ pound of sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture and skim off any foam.

Finish the cordial

  1. Once cool, stir in 1 quart of whisky for every gallon of juice and sugar.

  2. Add your choice of spices while boiling.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Blackberry + whiskytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + whiskytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,008 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Blackberry + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,033 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

Blackberry juice
Provides the main fruit flavour and colour, and forms the liquid base of the cordial.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body, balancing the tartness of the blackberry juice.
Whisky
Adds alcohol that helps preserve the cordial and carries aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the whisky. Alcohol evaporates readily when heated, so adding whisky to a hot mixture would lose much of its alcohol and delicate aroma. Cooling first keeps the spirit's character in the finished cordial.

Swap the blackberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, whisky):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Blackberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, whisky. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesLemonadeLemonade126 recipes