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Blackberry Cordial

A sweet blackberry cordial made by extracting juice, mixing with sugar and cinnamon, and bottling after cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Blackberry Cordial

Why it works: Blackberry and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 362 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Blackberry Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Warm and squeeze the blackberries to extract the juice.

  2. Combine the juice with the sugar and cinnamon in a pot. Stir until the sugar is fully dissolved.

  3. Let the mixture cool before bottling.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Blackberry + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Blackberry + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Blackberry juice
Provides the main fruit flavour and colour of the cordial.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and body, and helps preserve the cordial.
Powdered cinnamon
Adds warm spiced aroma and flavour to the cordial.

The step that matters

Stir until the sugar is fully dissolved. Undissolved sugar leaves grains in the cordial and can settle at the bottom of the bottle. Stirring until clear ensures an even sweetness throughout.

Swap the blackberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Blackberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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