Name: Cherry Brandy
Ingredients: 1 quart wild cherries; 1 gallon spirits (brandy or rum); 1 quart vinegar; 3 quarts raspberries; 1 pound sugar for each pint of juice

Why it works: Spirit and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 125 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Cherry Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Steep the fruit

Crush the wild cherries and combine with the spirits in a large container.
In a separate bowl, add 1 quart of vinegar to 3 quarts of raspberries and let it sit for one day.

Extract and sweeten

Squeeze the raspberry mixture through a cloth to extract the juice.
For each pint of raspberry juice, add 1 pound of sugar and boil for 20 minutes.

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.

Spirit + vinegartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together125 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Spirit + sugartop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together602 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Wild cherries: Crushing releases their fruit flavor into the spirits.
Spirits: Extract flavor from the cherries and help preserve the finished liquor.
Raspberries: Provide the juice that gives the liqueur its main fruit flavor.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavor.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and the alcohol.

“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.