Skip to main content
Sauce

Spiced Blackberry Syrup

A spiced syrup made by boiling strained blackberry juice with sugar, mace, cinnamon, cloves, allspice and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Blackberry Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Squeeze the blackberries and strain the juice.

  2. Boil the juice and skim off any foam.

Spice and simmer

  1. Add sugar, mace, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice to the juice.

  2. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

  3. Stir in the brandy before removing from heat.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Blackberries
Provide the main juice, flavor, and deep color of the syrup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body, giving the syrup its thick texture as it boils.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a boozy depth of flavor to the finished syrup.

The step that matters

Stir in the brandy before removing from heat.. Alcohol evaporates readily when heated, so adding the brandy at the end, off the heat, keeps more of its aroma and flavor in the syrup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, clove, allspice, brandy):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, clove, allspice, brandy. 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes