Name: Cherry Water
Ingredients: 2 lbs good cherries; 3 quarts boiling water; 1 quart cherry syrup at 38°F

Why it works: Cherry and syrup work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 339 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cherry Water

Ingredients

2 lbs good cherries
3 quarts boiling water
1 quart cherry syrup at 38°F

Directions

Steep the cherries

Remove the stalks from the cherries and place them in a basin.
Pour boiling water over the cherries and cover the basin; let steep for 2 hours.

Strain and finish

Strain the juice through a jelly bag lined with paper.
Add the cherry syrup to the juice and stir well.
Pour the cherry water into jugs.

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.

Cherry + syruptop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together339 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

Cherries: Provide the main fruit flavour and colour of the infusion.
Cherry syrup: Adds sweetness and extra cherry flavour to the finished juice.

“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.