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Drink

Currant Cordial

A sweet alcoholic beverage made by macerating currants and ginger in whiskey, then sweetening with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Currant Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour 1 quart of whiskey over 1 pound of bruised currants and 1 ounce of bruised white ginger root.

  2. Let it stand for 24 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture through a flannel bag.

  4. Add 1½ pounds of loaf sugar and bottle it when the sugar is dissolved.

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. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  2. Currant + gingertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together834 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Whiskey
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the currants and ginger.
Currants
Provide the fruit flavour and colour that the spirit draws out during steeping.
White ginger root
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the infused spirit.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cordial and balances the sharpness of the fruit and spirit.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, 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.

More currant cordial recipes

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