Skip to main content
Drink

Cherry Bounce

A cherry liqueur made by boiling cherries with sugar, allspice, mace, brandy, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Brandy and rum are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,058 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cherry Bounce

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Place the pitted cherries in a jar.

  2. Put the jar in a pot of water and bring to a boil to extract the juice.

  3. Strain the juice into a kettle.

Make the syrup

  1. Add 4 pounds of sugar to the juice and boil until the scum is removed.

  2. While boiling, add 1 teaspoon of allspice and a few blades of mace.

Finish and bottle

  1. Just before bottling, stir in 1 quart of brandy and 1 quart of rum.

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. Brandy + rumtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

  2. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  4. Allspice + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Allspice + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together931 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Cherries
Provide the fruit flavour and juice that forms the base of the drink.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps preserve the finished drink.
Brandy
Adds alcohol that helps preserve the drink and contributes warm flavour.
Rum
Adds alcohol that helps preserve the drink and contributes warm flavour.

The step that matters

Remove the scum while boiling. Boiling the juice with sugar draws foam and impurities to the surface. Skimming them off keeps the liquid clear and stops off flavours from spoiling the finished drink.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, allspice, brandy, rum):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, allspice, brandy, rum. 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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes