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 Whiskey
Ingredients
Directions
Steep the cherries
Place the cherries in a jar and pour the whiskey or brandy over them.
Let the mixture stand for one month.
Remove the cherries, bruise them in a mortar, and return them to the jar.
Let it stand for another month.
Sweeten and bottle
Strain the liquor and add 3/4 pound of loaf sugar made into a syrup for every quart.
Pour the boiling syrup into the cold liquor and let it settle and cool.
Once cool, bottle and cork well.
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.
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Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Ripe cherries
- Release their juice and flavor into the spirit during the long steeping.
- Whiskey or brandy
- Acts as the solvent that extracts flavor from the cherries and preserves the liqueur.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the liqueur and balances the sharpness of the spirit.
The step that matters
Pour the boiling syrup into the cold liquor. Adding hot syrup to cold spirit can cause cloudiness or uneven mixing, so the liquor should be allowed to settle and cool afterward so the sugar blends and any sediment falls out before bottling.
“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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