Name: Blackberry Syrup
Ingredients: 2 quarts blackberry juice; ½ ounce powdered nutmeg; ½ ounce powdered cinnamon; ½ ounce powdered allspice; ¼ ounce powdered cloves; 1 pint pure brandy; loaf sugar to taste

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Blackberry Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

In a pot, combine blackberry juice, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves.
Boil the mixture to extract the spice flavors and preserve the juice.
For best results, place the spices in a muslin bag during boiling.
While hot, stir in the brandy and sweeten with loaf sugar to taste.

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.

Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,331 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Blackberry juice: Provides the main fruit flavor and liquid base of the syrup.
Brandy: Adds alcohol that carries aroma and helps keep the syrup stable.
Loaf sugar: Adds sweetness and body to balance the tart blackberry juice.

Swap the blackberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, clove, brandy, sugar):

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Blackberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, clove, brandy, 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.