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Drink

Cherry Whiskey

A liqueur made by macerating cherries in whiskey or brandy, sweetened with sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cherry Whiskey

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the cherries

  1. Place the cherries in a jar.

  2. Pour the whiskey or brandy over the cherries.

  3. Let it stand for 1 month.

  4. Remove the fruit and mash it in a mortar.

  5. Return the mashed fruit to the liquor and let it stand for another month.

Strain and sweeten

  1. Strain the liquor.

  2. Make a syrup with ¾ pound of sugar and add it to every quart of liquor.

  3. Pour the boiling syrup into the cold liquor.

  4. Let it settle and cool completely.

Bottle

  1. Bottle and cork well.

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

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

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Ripe cherries
Provide the main fruit flavour and aroma that the spirit takes up during steeping.
Whiskey or brandy
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour and colour from the cherries.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the spirit and the fruit's tartness.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling syrup into the cold liquor. Adding very hot syrup to cold spirit can cause cloudiness and uneven mixing, so the syrup should be cooled slightly first and the liquor allowed to settle afterward.

“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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