Name: British Brandy, to Improve the Flavour of
Ingredients: 5 French plums; 1 gallon British brandy

Why it works: Plum and brandy work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 168 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

British Brandy, to Improve the Flavour of

Ingredients

5 French plums
1 gallon British brandy

Directions

Place the French plums in a stone bottle.
Pour the British brandy over the plums.
Let it steep for ten days.
Strain off the brandy.

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.

Plum + brandytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together168 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

French plums: Supply the fruit flavour and aroma that the brandy takes on during steeping.
British brandy: Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour and colour from the plums over time.

“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.