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Raisin Cordial

A homemade raisin cordial made with raisins, ginger, citrus rinds, whiskey or gin, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Raisin Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Combine the raisins, ginger, lemon rinds, orange rind, and whiskey or gin in a bottle, then seal the bottle.

  2. Let it sit for a few weeks.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Sweeten and bottle

  1. Dissolve the sugar in boiled water.

  2. Add the sugar syrup to the strained mixture, then seal the bottle again.

  3. Let it sit for another week.

  4. Filter the mixture before the final bottling.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Provide sweetness and body, and release fruit flavour into the spirit as they steep.
Whiskey or gin
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the fruit, rinds and ginger, and preserves the mixture.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to balance the spirit.
Ginger
Contributes warm, aromatic spice that infuses into the spirit during steeping.

The step that matters

Sealing and resting the bottle. Alcohol extracts flavour slowly, so the bottle must be kept sealed to prevent evaporation and contamination while the raisins and rinds steep over several weeks.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, lemon, orange, gin, sugar):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, lemon, orange, gin, sugar. 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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