Name: Cherries, in Brandy
Ingredients: Morella cherries; ½ pound white sugar, pounded; ¼ ounce cloves; 1 quart white brandy; a few apricot or peach kernels (or blanched bitter almonds)

Why it works: Brandy and apricot work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 513 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Cherries, in Brandy

Ingredients

Morella cherries
½ pound white sugar, pounded
¼ ounce cloves
1 quart white brandy
a few apricot or peach kernels (or blanched bitter almonds)

Directions

Prepare

Cut half the stalk off the Morella cherries.
Place the cherries in a glass jar.

Steep

Add the pounded sugar and cloves to the jar.
Pour in the white brandy.
Add the apricot or peach kernels for flavor.
Cover the jar with a piece of wet bladder.
The next day, cover the bladder with paper.

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.

Brandy + apricottop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together513 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Clove + apricottop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together204 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Clove + brandytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,362 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,630 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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

Morella cherries: Provide the fruit whose flavor and color are extracted into the brandy.
White sugar: Sweetens the brandy and draws juice from the cherries through osmosis.
White brandy: Acts as the alcoholic base that extracts and preserves the cherry flavor.
Cloves: Add warm, aromatic spice notes to the infused liquid.