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Drink

Sloe Gin

A gin-based liqueur made by infusing sloes and sweetening with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Gin and sugar work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 344 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sloe Gin

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Fill a wide-necked bottle with sloes.

  2. Pour enough gin over the sloes to fill the bottle.

  3. Cork the bottle securely.

  4. Let it stand for 10 days.

  5. Strain off the liquid.

  6. Remove the fruit.

  7. Replace the fruit with fresh sloes.

  8. Pour in the gin, adding more if necessary.

  9. Let it stand for another 10 days.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain again.

  2. Add 4 to 5 ounces of sugar for each pint of liqueur.

  3. 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. Gin + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sloes
Supply the main fruit flavour and colour that the gin draws out during infusing.
Good un-sweetened gin
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour and colour from the sloes.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharp, tannic flavour of the sloes.

The step that matters

Replacing the fruit and topping up with gin. Sloes are tart and astringent, and the second batch of fresh fruit extracts more flavour and colour into the spirit. Adding gin as needed keeps the sloes fully submerged so they infuse evenly rather than spoiling at the surface.

“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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