Name: Morella Cherry Brandy
Ingredients: sifted sugar; good French brandy; morella cherries

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 ↓

Morella Cherry Brandy

Ingredients

sifted sugar
good French brandy
morella cherries

Directions

Fill a bottle with Morello cherries.
Add enough sifted sugar to fill more than half of the remaining space.
Pour in enough good French brandy to cover the fruit and reach the neck of the bottle.
Cork the bottle securely.
Let it stand for two months before opening.

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

Morello cherries: Provide the main fruit flavour and colour that the brandy absorbs over time.
Sifted sugar: Sweetens the brandy and draws juice from the cherries as it dissolves.
French brandy: Acts as the alcoholic base that extracts and preserves the cherry 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.