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Raisin Cordial

A spirit infused with raisins, ginger, citrus, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Raisin Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stir and chop the raisins.

  2. Add the bruised ginger and thin rinds of the lemon and orange to the spirit.

Infuse and sweeten

  1. Cork the mixture and let it sit for a few weeks.

  2. Strain the mixture and add the sugar, either directly or dissolved in ½ cup of water.

  3. Cork the mixture when cool and strain again after a week, pressing the fruit well.

  4. Filter 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.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Provide sweetness and fruit flavour that is extracted into the spirit during steeping.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the strong, alcoholic bitterness of the spirit.
Old whisky or gin
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the fruit, ginger and citrus rinds.
Ginger
Contributes warm, aromatic spice that infuses into the spirit.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture and add the sugar. Sugar dissolves more readily in a warm or water-based syrup than when added directly to strong alcohol, so dissolving it in water first helps it blend evenly and prevents grainy sediment.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, whisky, ginger, lemon, orange):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Blackberryfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, whisky, ginger, lemon, orange. 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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