Why it works: Brandy and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Cherry Bounce
Ingredients
Directions
Steep the cherries
Combine 15 pounds of morella cherries with 1 gallon of French brandy or Monongahela whisky.
Let the mixture stand for 3 to 4 months.
Pour off the liquor and add 2 quarts of water to the cherries.
Let the water sit on the cherries for 3 weeks.
Pour off the water and combine it with the liquor.
Sweeten and finish
Add 4 pounds of sugar to the mixture and heat to create a syrup.
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.
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Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together11,939 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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
- Morella cherries
- Provide the main fruit flavor and juice that colour and flavour the spirit.
- French brandy or monongahela whisky
- Extracts flavour from the cherries and preserves the fruit through long steeping.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and body, balancing the sharpness of the cherries and spirit.
- Water
- Draws out the remaining cherry flavour and sugars left in the fruit after the first liquor is poured off.
The step that matters
Adding the sugar and heating to a syrup. Sugar must fully dissolve into the liquid; heating helps it dissolve evenly so the sweetness is uniform rather than gritty or pooled at the bottom.
“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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