Name: Cherry Cordial
Ingredients: 2 cups cherries; 1½ cups whisky; 1 cup sugar

Why it works: Whisky and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,008 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cherry Cordial

Ingredients

2 cups cherries
1½ cups whisky
1 cup sugar

Directions

Prepare

Place cherries in a jar and cover with whisky.
Let it stand for two weeks.

Finish

Mash the mixture and strain through a cloth.
Add sugar to create a thick syrup.

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.

Whisky + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,008 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

Cherries: Provide the fruit flavour and colour that the whisky draws out during steeping.
Whisky: Extracts flavour from the cherries and acts as the preserving base of the cordial.
Sugar: Sweetens the liquor and thickens it into a syrupy body.

“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.