Name: Cherry Brandy
Ingredients: ripe wild cherries; candy sugar; 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 ↓

Cherry Brandy

Ingredients

ripe wild cherries
candy sugar
brandy

Directions

Prepare

Select ripe wild cherries when perfectly black.
Fill a large prune bottle three-quarters full with the cherries.
Fill the bottle with candy sugar.
Pour in as much brandy as the bottle will hold.

Rest

When the sugar is melted, it is fit 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.

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

Ripe wild cherries: Provide the main fruit flavour and aroma that the brandy takes up.
Candy sugar: Adds sweetness and slowly dissolves to balance the brandy's sharpness.
Brandy: Acts as the alcoholic base that extracts and preserves the cherry flavour.

“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.