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Drink

Caraway Brandy

A spirit infused with ginger and caraway seeds, steeped for ten days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and caraway work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 288 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Caraway Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

  1. Dissolve the ginger in the brandy.

  2. Sprinkle the caraway seeds on top.

Steep and bottle

  1. Let the mixture sit in a jar for ten days.

  2. Strain the liquid and bottle it for use.

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. Ginger + carawaytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Brandy + carawaytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Ginger + brandytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Ginger
Supplies the sharp, spicy aroma and warm flavor that define the drink.
Brandy
Serves as the liquid base that extracts and carries the flavors of the other ingredients.
Caraway seeds
Add a distinctive aromatic, slightly anise-like flavor to the spirit.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture sit for ten days. Alcohol draws flavor and aroma out of the ginger and seeds slowly. Cutting the steeping short leaves the brandy weak and unevenly flavored, so the full period matters.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, caraway. 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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