Skip to main content
Drink

Hops and Sherry Cordial

A cordial made by infusing hops in sherry, sweetened with a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sherry and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,141 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Hops and Sherry Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fill a wide-mouthed bottle with hops, shaking them together without pressing down.

  2. Cover the hops with sherry and let them infuse for one month.

Make the cordial

  1. Strain the liquid and mix it with a syrup made by boiling ½ pint of water with 6 ounces of sugar.

  2. Strain again and keep the cordial in closely-corked bottles for use.

Serve

  1. To serve, mix a wine glassful of the cordial in half a tumblerful of water.

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. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Hops + sherrytop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Hops
Provide a bitter, aromatic flavour that infuses into the sherry.
Sherry
Serves as the infusing liquid, extracting flavour from the hops.
Sugar
Sweetens the cordial and balances the bitterness of the hops.

“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