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
Steep the fruit
Place the cherries in a jar and pour the whiskey or brandy over them.
Let it stand for 1 month.
Remove the fruit, bruise it in a mortar, and return it to the liquor.
Let it stand for another month.
Finish and bottle
Strain off the liquor.
Make a syrup with the sugar and add it to the liquor.
Pour the boiling syrup into the cold liquor.
Let it settle and cool completely.
Once cold, bottle and cork well.
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.
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Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Release their juice and flavour into the spirit, giving the liqueur its fruit character.
- Whiskey or brandy
- Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the fruit and preserves the liqueur.
- Loaf sugar
- Adds sweetness, balancing the alcohol and the tartness of the cherries.
The step that matters
Pouring the boiling syrup into the cold liquor. Adding very hot syrup to cold spirit can cause cloudiness or haze as the sugar and flavour compounds shift. Letting the mixture settle and cool fully before bottling lets it clear.
“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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