Name: Caraway Brandy
Ingredients: 4 ounces caraway seeds; 1.5 pounds sugar; 1 gallon 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 ↓

Caraway Brandy

Ingredients

4 ounces caraway seeds
1.5 pounds sugar
1 gallon brandy

Directions

Steep caraway seeds and sugar in brandy.
Let it stand for two days.
Bottle the mixture.

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).
Caraway + brandytop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together104 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Caraway + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

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

Caraway seeds: Provides the main aroma and flavor of the liqueur.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the strong alcohol and caraway flavor.
Brandy: Acts as the solvent that extracts flavor from the caraway seeds and preserves the mixture.