Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
To Preserve Fruit
Ingredients
Directions
Moisten sugar and mix with fruit in a jar.
Wet a bladder and cover the top of the jar, tying it down.
Place jars in a pot of cold water and gradually increase heat.
Simmer gently for 15 minutes without boiling.
Remove jars from water and let cool in a dry place.
If any bladders burst, discard those jars.
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.
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Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together11,939 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Brandy + muttontop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together90 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-hexanol (green, grassy).
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Sugar + muttontop 34% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together726 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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
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