Name: Raspberry Cordial
Ingredients: 1 quart raspberry juice; ½ pint cherry juice; 2 liters French brandy; 1 pound loaf sugar

Why it works: Raspberry and cherry work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 192 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Raspberry Cordial

Ingredients

1 quart raspberry juice
½ pint cherry juice
2 liters French brandy
1 pound loaf sugar

Directions

Prepare the juices

Squeeze the raspberries and pitted cherries in a linen bag to extract the juices.
Mix the raspberry juice and cherry juice together.

Make the cordial

Dissolve 1 pound of loaf sugar in the juice mixture.
Add 2 liters of French brandy to the mixture.
Pour the mixture into a jug and let it rest for five weeks.
After five weeks, strain the mixture and bottle it for use.

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.

Raspberry + cherrytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together192 recipes

Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).
Raspberry + brandytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together235 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-hex-3-en-1-ol (freshly cut grass green and herbaceous notes).
Cherry + brandytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together300 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Cherry + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,598 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Brandy and sugar 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

Raspberry juice: Provides the main flavour and fruity aroma of the cordial.
Cherry juice: Adds extra fruit flavour and depth to the raspberry base.
French brandy: Acts as a preservative and carries the fruit aromas as an alcohol base.
Loaf sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the fruit juices.