Skip to main content
Drink

Blackberry Cordial

A sweet blackberry cordial made by stewing berries, straining, adding sugar, boiling, cooling, and infusing with liquor and cloves.

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

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 Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Stew the berries until well cooked.

  2. Strain the mixture through a colander and let it drip.

  3. Place the juice in a thin muslin bag and let it drip without squeezing.

Make the cordial

  1. For each gallon of juice, add 3 pounds of sugar and boil in a brass or bell metal kettle, skimming well.

  2. Once done, remove from heat and let it cool.

  3. Add 1 quart of liquor to each gallon of juice and bottle.

  4. Add 6 cloves to each bottle of cordial.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

Berries
Provide the juice that forms the body and colour of the cordial.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body, and helps preserve the finished cordial.
Liquor (whiskey or rum)
Adds alcohol that acts as a preservative and carries the flavour.

The step that matters

Skimming while the sugar boils. Boiling the juice with sugar produces foam and impurities that rise to the surface. Skimming them off keeps the cordial clear and clean-tasting.

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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesLemonadeLemonade126 recipes