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White Currant Cordial

A cordial made from white currants, whiskey, lemon rind, sugar, clarified butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

White Currant Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bruise the white currants.

  2. Add whiskey and thinly pared lemon rind.

  3. Let it stand for 2 days.

  4. Strain or filter the mixture.

Finish and age

  1. Add leaf sugar, clarified butter, and lemon juice.

  2. Bottle and seal the cordial.

  3. Let it sit for at least 1 month before using.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. White currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together59 recipes

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

White currants
Provide the main fruit flavour and tartness that the cordial is built on.
Whiskey
Draws flavour out of the fruit and lends its own warm aroma.
Leaf sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the fruit's tartness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour.
Lemon rind
Its aromatic oils add a fresh citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Let it sit for at least 1 month before using.. Resting lets the spirit, fruit and sugar blend and mellow, so the flavours become rounder and less sharp. Using it too early tends to taste harsher and less integrated.

Swap the white currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar. 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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