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Dessert

Blackberry Syrup

A syrup made by cooking blackberries with sugar and water, then reducing the juice and adding brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Blackberry Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Place the blackberries, sugar, and cold water in a large jar with a close-fitting cover.

  2. Stand the jar in a saucepan of boiling water and cook gently for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the juice and measure it.

Make the syrup

  1. Put the juice into a preserving pan or enamelled stewpan and boil gently for 20 minutes, skimming carefully.

  2. For each pint of syrup, add a small glass of brandy.

  3. Let the mixture cool completely, then bottle 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.

  1. 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

Blackberries
Provide the fruit juice that forms the base of the syrup and its flavour.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the juice and, when boiled down, thickens it into a syrup.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour and helps preserve the syrup once bottled.

The step that matters

Skimming during the final boil. Skimming removes foam and scum that rise as the juice boils, keeping the syrup clear and free of off-flavours before bottling.

“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.

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