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White Currant Cordial, Mrs. Speaco

A cordial made from bruised white currants, whiskey, lemon, sugar, ginger, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

White Currant Cordial, Mrs. Speaco

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Combine bruised white currants and whiskey in a jar.

  2. Add the thinly sliced lemon rind and let it stand for 2 days.

Finish and bottle

  1. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  2. Stir in the loaf sugar, ginger, and lemon juice until dissolved.

  3. Bottle and seal the cordial.

  4. Let it sit for at least 1 month before using; it improves with age.

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 + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. White currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together59 recipes

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

White currants
Provide the main fruit flavour and tartness that the whiskey draws out.
Whiskey
Extracts flavour from the fruit and acts as the preserving alcohol in the cordial.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cordial and balances the acidity of the currants and lemon.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic citrus oils that scent the infusion.
Ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma that complements the fruit.

The step that matters

Let it sit for at least 1 month before using. Flavours from the fruit, rind and spice blend and mellow over time, so a young cordial tastes harsher and less rounded than one rested for the full period.

Swap the white currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. White currantthe original

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