Name: Blackberry Syrup
Ingredients: ½ pound blackberry root; ½ pound white oak bark; 1 gallon water; cloves (to taste); cinnamon (to taste); pepper (to taste); sugar (to taste); ⅓ cup best French brandy (per quart)

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Blackberry Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Cut blackberry root and white oak bark into small pieces or pulverize them.
Boil the pieces in 1 gallon of water until reduced to 2 quarts.
Strain the mixture and return it to the pot.
Add cloves, cinnamon, pepper, and enough sugar to create a thick syrup.
For each quart of syrup, add ⅓ cup of best French brandy.
Bottle the syrup and seal with wax.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Blackberry + clovetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together212 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Blackberry + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together362 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Blackberry + brandytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together146 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

Swap the blackberry

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Orangefits better
Blackberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, cinnamon, pepper, sugar, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.