Name: Cherry Wine
Ingredients: 2 pounds cherries; 1 gallon boiling water; 1 pound sugar; 1 pint rum or British brandy

Why it works: Sugar and rum are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,908 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cherry Wine

Ingredients

2 pounds cherries
1 gallon boiling water
1 pound sugar
1 pint rum or British brandy

Directions

Prepare the cherries

Bruise the cherries and break the stones.
Pour boiling water over the cherries and let them stand for a week, stirring occasionally.

Strain and flavour

Strain the mixture through a sieve, then through a jelly bag.
For each gallon of juice, add 1 pound of sugar and 1 pint of rum or British brandy.

Jar and bottle

Jar the mixture and bottle it after one month.

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.

Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,908 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

Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the cherry juice.
Rum or british brandy: Adds alcohol that preserves the wine and contributes aroma.

“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.