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Drink

Fruit Drink

A sweet fruit syrup made by simmering fruit with water and sugar, optionally flavored with brandy and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fruit Drink

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Mash the fruit well in a saucepan.

  2. Add ¾ pint of water for each pound of fruit.

  3. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag.

Bottle and store

  1. Bottle the syrup.

  2. If storing long-term, add ⅓ cup of brandy for each quart of syrup to prevent fermentation.

  3. Add a small quantity of lemon juice for flavor if desired.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Brandy + lemontop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Picked fruit
Provides the main flavor and most of the body of the syrup.
Sifted sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve it by binding water.
Brandy
Adds alcohol that helps prevent fermentation during long-term storage.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the syrup.

The step that matters

Adding brandy for long-term storage. Brandy adds alcohol, which inhibits yeast and other microbes that cause fermentation. Add it only when storing long-term, and measure it per quart of syrup as the step states, so the syrup keeps safely.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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