Name: Cherry Bounce
Ingredients: 6 quarts wild cherries; 1.5 gallons rum; 2 quarts water; 1 pound loaf sugar

Why it works: Rum and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,908 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cherry Bounce

Ingredients

6 quarts wild cherries
1.5 gallons rum
2 quarts water
1 pound loaf sugar

Directions

Place the wild cherries in a 3‑gallon demijohn.
Add the rum and water.
Stir in the loaf sugar until 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.

Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

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 flavour and aroma that the spirit draws out over time.
Rum: Acts as the solvent and preservative, extracting flavour from the cherries while keeping the mixture stable.
Loaf sugar: Adds sweetness and rounds out the sharpness of the fruit and spirit.

“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.