Name: Another Way to Make Cherry Brandy
Ingredients: 12 pounds morella cherries; 6 pounds common cherries; 2 pounds sugar candy; 6 quarts brandy

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 ↓

Another Way to Make Cherry Brandy

Ingredients

12 pounds morella cherries
6 pounds common cherries
2 pounds sugar candy
6 quarts brandy

Directions

Prepare the cherries

Bake the morella and common cherries until soft.
Press out the juice and pound the stones in a marble mortar.

Combine and steep

Mix the juice with the pounded stones and add the sugar candy.
Stir in the brandy to make a total of three gallons.

Age and bottle

Pour the mixture into a large glass bottle and shake it frequently for three months.
After three months, strain the mixture through a jelly bag and bottle it for use.

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.

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 main cherry flavour and most of the juice.
Common cherries: Add more cherry juice and fruit flavour to the base.
Sugar candy: Adds sweetness to balance the tart fruit and strong brandy.
Brandy: Acts as the solvent that draws out flavour and preserves the mixture.

“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.