Name: Raspberry Brandy
Ingredients: 1 quart raspberry juice; 2 quarts good brandy; 1 quart water; 1 pound sugar

Why it works: Raspberry and brandy work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 235 recipes. Both carry (z)-hex-3-en-1-ol, which smells freshly cut grass green and herbaceous notes. The science ↓

Raspberry Brandy

Ingredients

1 quart raspberry juice
2 quarts good brandy
1 quart water
1 pound sugar

Directions

Prepare the juice

Crush raspberries and strain to obtain 1 quart of juice.

Make the syrup

Boil 1 quart of water with 1 pound of sugar for 5 minutes.
Pour the boiling water and sugar mixture over the raspberries.

Steep and bottle

Let it stand for 1 month to 6 weeks.
When ready, bottle the mixture.

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.

Raspberry + brandytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together235 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-hex-3-en-1-ol (freshly cut grass green and herbaceous notes).
Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Raspberry + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,101 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Brandy and sugar 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

Raspberry juice: Provides the main raspberry flavour and colour of the finished spirit.
Brandy: Acts as the alcoholic base that extracts and carries the raspberry flavour.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and rounds out the tartness of the raspberry juice.