Name: To Make Cherry Brandy
Ingredients: 1 lb Morella cherries; ⅓ cup good brandy; 3 oz pounded sugar; a few peach or apricot kernels (optional); a few blanched bitter almonds (optional)

Why it works: Peach and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 466 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Make Cherry Brandy

Ingredients

1 lb Morella cherries
⅓ cup good brandy
3 oz pounded sugar
a few peach or apricot kernels (optional)
a few blanched bitter almonds (optional)

Directions

Prepare

Ensure glass bottles are perfectly dry.
Select fresh, not overly ripe cherries and cut off half of the stalks.

Fill and seal

Place cherries in the bottles, layering with sugar.
Fill the bottles with brandy just below the cork.
Add optional peach or apricot kernels or blanched bitter almonds for flavor.
Cork the bottles and tie a piece of bladder over them.

Store

Store in a dry place.
The cherries will be ready to eat in 2 to 3 months and can last for years.

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.

Peach + almondtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Brandy + peachtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together339 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Brandy + almondtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,969 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,308 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 flavor and juice that infuses into the brandy.
Brandy: Acts as the solvent that extracts flavor from the fruit and preserves it.
Pounded sugar: Draws juice out of the cherries and sweetens the finished liquor.