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Drink

Geranium Cordial

A sweet alcoholic infusion made with rose geranium leaves, sugar syrup, and alcohol.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rose and geranium work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry cis-rose oxide, which smells green, flower. The science ↓

Geranium Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Place a handful of dried rose geranium leaves in a bottle.

  2. Pour 1 pint of alcohol over the leaves and let it stand for 2 weeks, shaking occasionally.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Make the syrup and finish

  1. Boil 1 pound of loaf sugar with 1 pint of water to make a syrup.

  2. Add the syrup to the strained alcohol mixture and stir well.

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. Rose + geraniumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-rose oxide (green, flower).

  2. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + geraniumtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together46 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

Rose geranium leaves
Provide the dominant floral, aromatic flavour as the alcohol draws out their oils.
Alcohol
Extracts the aromatic compounds from the leaves and keeps the finished cordial stable.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and body, balancing the strong, slightly bitter herbal character of the infusion.

The step that matters

Letting the leaves steep in the alcohol. Aromatic compounds release slowly into alcohol, so a short steep gives a weak, thin flavour. The full two-week stand, with occasional shaking to spread the liquid over the leaves, lets the flavour build properly.

“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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