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Drink

Blackberry Corbial

A blackberry liqueur made by boiling berries, straining, sweetening, and adding rum or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and rum are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,908 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Blackberry Corbial

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Boil the blackberries and water for about 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through flannel or cotton.

  3. Add 4.5 pounds of sugar to each gallon of juice.

Finish and bottle

  1. When cool, mix in 2.5 quarts of white rum or 2 quarts of brandy.

  2. Put a few cloves in each bottle.

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 + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  2. Rum + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Blackberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and juice for the cordial.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps preserve the finished cordial.
White rum or brandy
Adds alcohol that preserves the cordial and contributes its own aroma.

The step that matters

Add the rum or brandy only when the mixture is cool. Alcohol is volatile, so adding it to hot liquid lets much of its aroma evaporate. Cooling first keeps the spirit's character in the finished cordial.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, rum):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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

“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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