Skip to main content
Drink

Blackberry Sirup

A sweet syrup made from blackberries, sugar, water, and brandy.

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

Why it works: Blackberry and brandy work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 146 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Blackberry Sirup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pick over ripe blackberries and crush them.

  2. Squeeze the juice through a clean cloth.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar with the water for 10 minutes to make a syrup.

  2. Add the syrup to the blackberry juice and boil together for 15 minutes, stirring well.

  3. Add the brandy to each quart of the blackberry syrup.

Bottle

  1. When the syrup is completely cold, bottle and seal it air-tight.

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. Blackberry + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Sugar + blackberrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and body, thickening the syrup as it reduces.
Blackberry juice
Supplies the main fruit flavor and deep color of the syrup.
Brandy
Adds aroma and alcohol, which helps keep the syrup stable in storage.

The step that matters

Cool the syrup completely before bottling. Bottling warm syrup traps steam, which condenses into water inside the bottle and dilutes the syrup, encouraging spoilage. Full cooling before sealing keeps the syrup stable.

Swap the blackberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Blackberrythe 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.

You might also like

Blackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes