Name: Raspberry Liqueur
Ingredients: 1 pint fresh ripe raspberries; 1 quart genuine spirit (any kind); 1 pound sugar; 1½ pints water

Why it works: Spirit and sugar work together. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Raspberry Liqueur

Ingredients

1 pint fresh ripe raspberries
1 quart genuine spirit (any kind)
1 pound sugar
1½ pints water

Directions

Infuse the raspberries

Place the raspberries in a spirit jar and add the spirit.
Cork the jar tightly and let it sit for one month.

Make the syrup and bottle

Boil the sugar in the water until it forms a clear syrup.
Filter the spirit through a fine sieve into a basin.
Mix the filtered spirit with the syrup and bottle it for use.
Let it sit for one month before using.

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.

Spirit + sugartop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together602 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

Raspberries: Provide the main fruit flavour and aroma that the spirit draws out during steeping.
Spirit: Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour and colour from the raspberries.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the alcohol's sharpness in the finished liqueur.

“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.