Name: Damson Wine
Ingredients: 1 gallon damsons; 1 gallon boiling water; 4 lbs loaf sugar; ½ pint French 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 ↓

Damson Wine

Ingredients

1 gallon damsons
1 gallon boiling water
4 lbs loaf sugar
½ pint French brandy

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Remove the stalks from the damsons and place the fruit in an earthenware bowl.
Pour the boiling water over the damsons and cover with a cloth.
Stir the mixture 3 to 4 times daily for 4 days.

Finish and cask

Add the sugar and brandy, stirring until the sugar is dissolved.
Transfer the mixture into a clean, dry cask and cover the bunghole.

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

Damsons: Provide the fruit flavour, colour and the bulk of the wine.
Loaf sugar: Provides sweetness and feeds the fermentation that produces alcohol.
French brandy: Adds alcohol and strengthens the wine, helping preserve it.

“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.