Name: To Improve English Brandy
Ingredients: 10 gallons English brandy; 1 ounce tincture of japanica; 3 ounces spirit of nitre dulcis

Why it works: Brandy and spirit work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 209 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells sweet. The science ↓

To Improve English Brandy

Ingredients

10 gallons English brandy
1 ounce tincture of japanica
3 ounces spirit of nitre dulcis

Directions

Mix the tincture of japanica and spirit of nitre dulcis with a portion of the brandy.
Pour the mixture into a cask.
Stir the contents of the cask well.

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.

Brandy + spirittop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together209 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

English brandy: Forms the bulk of the liquid and carries the flavour of the finished spirit.
Tincture of japanica: Adds aroma and colour to the brandy as a flavouring tincture.
Spirit of nitre dulcis: Contributes a light, fragrant character to the blended spirit.

“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.