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Blackberry or Peach Cordial

A homemade cordial made by steeping blackberries or peaches in whisky, then sweetening with a spiced syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Blackberry or Peach Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Steep the fruit

  1. Fill glass jars with fresh blackberries or chopped peaches.

  2. Pour whisky into the jars until full and let it stand for six months or more.

  3. After six months, pour off the whisky and mash the berries or peaches well.

  4. Strain the mixture to extract the juice.

Make the syrup

  1. In a brass kettle, combine sugar with enough water to make a thick syrup.

  2. Tie mace, cloves, and any additional spices in a piece of muslin and add to the kettle.

  3. Boil the mixture for fifteen to twenty minutes.

Combine and bottle

  1. Pour the syrup into the whisky and bottle the cordial.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Peach + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Whisky + clovetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Peach + whiskytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25 recipes

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

  5. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 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

Blackberries or peaches
Provide the main fruit flavour and juice that gives the cordial its body and colour.
Whisky
Extracts flavour from the fruit and acts as a preservative in the finished cordial.
Sugar
Sweetens the cordial and, boiled into a thick syrup, gives it body.
Mace and cloves
Add warm aromatic spice notes that complement the fruit and whisky.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, whisky, sugar, clove. 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.

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