Skip to main content
Drink

Blackberry Syrup

A sweet syrup made from blackberries, water, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Blackberry Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. In a large pot, combine the blackberries and water.

  2. Simmer until the berries are soft enough to extract the juice.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve to collect the juice.

Make the syrup

  1. In a clean pot, bring the juice to a boil and skim off any foam.

  2. Add the sugar to the boiling juice and stir until it melts.

  3. Let the syrup cool, then stir in the brandy.

  4. Bottle the syrup and seal tightly.

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 + 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

Blackberries
Provide the main flavour and colour, and release juice when simmered.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and thickens it into a syrup as it dissolves.
Brandy
Adds aroma and helps preserve the syrup once stirred in.

The step that matters

Add the brandy after cooling. Alcohol is volatile, so adding brandy to hot syrup lets much of its aroma evaporate. Stirring it in once the syrup has cooled keeps the flavour.

“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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes