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Drink

Wild Cherry Bounce

A liqueur made by infusing wild cherries in brandy, sweetened with clarified sugar, and flavored with cinnamon or cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Wild Cherry Bounce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Pick the cherries from the stalks.

  2. Fill the bottles nearly to the necks.

  3. Fill the bottles completely with good brandy.

  4. After 3 weeks to a month, strain off the spirit.

Sweeten and flavor

  1. To each quart of the strained spirit, add 1 lb of clarified sugar.

  2. Flavor with tincture of cinnamon or cloves to suit your taste.

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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Brandy + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Wild cherries
Provide the main fruit flavor and color that steep into the brandy.
Good brandy
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavor and color from the cherries and preserves the liquid.
Clarified sugar
Adds sweetness and body, softening the spirit's sharp alcohol edge.

“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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