Name: Red Currant Cordial
Ingredients: 2 quarts red currants; 1 quart whiskey; 1 pound loaf sugar; ¼ pound ginger

Why it works: Red currant and ginger work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Red Currant Cordial

Ingredients

2 quarts red currants
1 quart whiskey
1 pound loaf sugar
¼ pound ginger

Directions

Infuse

Combine 2 quarts of red currants with 1 quart of whiskey in a container.
Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.
Bruise the currants and strain the mixture through a flannel bag.

Sweeten and flavour

For every 2 quarts of liquid, add 1 pound of loaf sugar and ¼ pound of bruised ginger.
Boil the mixture.
Let it stand to settle.
Strain or filter the liquid.

Bottle

Bottle and cork it tightly.

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.

Red currant + gingertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together59 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together14,054 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Red currants: Provide the main fruit flavour and colour that the whiskey draws out during standing.
Whiskey: Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the currants and preserves the liquid.
Loaf sugar: Adds sweetness and body, balancing the sharp acidity of the red currants.
Ginger: Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the finished liqueur.