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Ginger Cordial

A ginger-infused liqueur made with lemons, whisky, ginger, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Slice the lemons and combine them with the bruised ginger and whisky in a large container.

  2. Let the mixture sit for three weeks.

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in boiling water over heat until melted, then let it cool.

Combine and bottle

  1. Strain the lemon and ginger mixture, then pour the cooled sugar syrup over it.

  2. Bottle the mixture and seal 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.

  1. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Whisky + gingertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Whisky + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,008 recipes

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

Ginger and sugar 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

Lemons
Add bright acidity and citrus aroma that balance the sweetness of the syrup.
Root ginger
Adds warm, pungent flavour that infuses into the whisky over time.
Whisky
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the lemon and ginger and preserves the mixture.
White sugar
Sweetens the cordial and, with the alcohol, helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Let the mixture sit for three weeks. Flavour is extracted slowly from the lemon and ginger into the alcohol, so cutting the infusion short leaves the cordial weak and under-flavoured.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whisky, ginger, sugar. 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.

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