Name: Cherry Bounce
Ingredients: ½ bushel wild cherries; 5 gallons brandy, whisky, or New England rum; 2 gallons water; 5 pounds sugar

Why it works: Brandy and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cherry Bounce

Ingredients

½ bushel wild cherries
5 gallons brandy, whisky, or New England rum
2 gallons water
5 pounds sugar

Directions

Prepare and steep

Pound the wild cherries and place them in cheesecloth bags.
Combine the bags with the brandy, whisky, or rum in a large container.
Let the mixture stand for three months.

Finish and rest

After three months, add the water and sugar.
The cherry bounce will be ready to use in one week.

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.

Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Wild cherries: Provide the main fruit flavour and colour that the spirit extracts over time.
Brandy, whisky, or new england rum: Acts as the solvent that draws flavour and colour out of the cherries and preserves the mixture.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the alcohol and the tartness of the cherries.

“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.