Name: Ginger Cordial
Ingredients: 4 oz. ground ginger; 2 lbs. white currants, picked and bruised; 1 quart pure whisky or brandy; 1 lb. loaf sugar

Why it works: Ginger and whisky work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 163 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Ginger Cordial

Ingredients

4 oz. ground ginger
2 lbs. white currants, picked and bruised
1 quart pure whisky or brandy
1 lb. loaf sugar

Directions

Steep the fruit

Combine ground ginger and bruised currants in a container and let it sit covered for 24 hours.

Strain and bottle

Pour whisky or brandy over the mixture and strain it through a linen cloth.
Add loaf sugar to the strained liquid and bottle it.

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.

Ginger + whiskytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together163 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together14,054 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Whisky + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,008 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together59 recipes
Ginger + white curranttop 34% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Ginger and sugar 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

Ground ginger: Supplies the warm, spicy aroma and flavour that defines the cordial.
White currants: Provide tart fruit acidity and juice that balance the sweetness.
Whisky or brandy: Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the ginger and currants.
Loaf sugar: Adds sweetness and rounds out the sharpness of the currants.