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Ginger Cordial

A spirit-based cordial made with whisky or brandy, lemon, orange, ginger, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Ginger Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Combine whisky, lemon juice, lemon rind, orange juice, and bruised ginger in a jar.

  2. Seal the jar tightly and let it sit for 2 days, shaking it vigorously occasionally.

Sweeten and bottle

  1. Strain the mixture through a flannel cloth, then add the lump sugar.

  2. Pour the mixture back into the jar and seal it tightly again.

  3. Let it stand until the sugar has melted, then strain carefully through filtering paper and bottle.

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. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Whisky + gingertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

Whisky or brandy
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the ginger and citrus.
Bruised ginger
Provides the main spicy, aromatic flavour of the cordial.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the cordial and balances the alcohol and citrus acidity.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and citrus aroma from the rind and juice.
Oranges
Adds juice for sweetness-balancing citrus flavour and body.

The step that matters

Shaking during the 2-day infusion. Occasional vigorous shaking keeps the ginger and citrus in contact with the alcohol, speeding up extraction of their flavour compounds. Without it, the infusion can be uneven and weaker.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

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