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Drink

Wild Cherry Cordial

A sweet syrup made from wild cherries, sugar, and water, steeped for months and flavored with currant juice or jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

Wild Cherry Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cordial

  1. Combine wild cherries, sugar, and boiling water in a jar or crock.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 3 months.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the mixture.

  2. Add currant juice or currant jelly, hot water, and adjust sugar to taste.

  3. Serve cold.

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.

  1. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Wild cherries
Provide the main fruit flavor and color that the cordial steeps out over the long standing period.
Sugar
Sweetens the cordial and helps draw flavor from the cherries while it stands.
Currant juice or currant jelly
Adds tart fruit flavor that balances the sweetness of the cordial.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for 3 months. Flavor and color are extracted slowly from the cherries in sugar syrup, so cutting the standing time short leaves the cordial weak and less developed.

“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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