Name: Brandy Gages
Ingredients: green gages; sugar; brandy

Why it works: Sugar and brandy 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 ↓

Brandy Gages

Ingredients

green gages
sugar
brandy

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Wash and dry the green gages.
Prick them on opposite sides.
If the skins are tough, remove them.
Pack them in bottles or jars with wide mouths.

Make the syrup

Prepare a rich syrup and let it cool to blood heat.

Bottle and seal

Mix one part syrup with two parts brandy.
Fill the bottles with the mixture, cork, and seal tightly.
If any syrup is left, bottle it for future use.

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.

Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy 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

Green gages: Provide the fruit whose flavour and juices infuse into the brandy.
Sugar: Makes the rich syrup that sweetens the finished fruit and balances the brandy.
Brandy: Acts as the preserving liquid and carries the fruit flavour through the bottle.

“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.