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Drink

Red-currant Cordial

A cordial made from red currants, whiskey, sugar, ginger, and optional raspberry juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and ginger work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Red-currant Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Combine 2 quarts of red currants with 1 quart of whiskey in a container.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

  3. Bruise the currants.

  4. Strain the mixture through a flannel bag.

Sweeten and clarify

  1. For every 2 quarts of liquid, add 1 pound of loaf sugar and ¼ pound of bruised, boiled ginger.

  2. Let the mixture settle.

  3. Strain or filter it again.

Bottle and mature

  1. Bottle the cordial.

  2. Cork it and seal the corks tightly.

  3. Mix in ½ quart of red raspberry juice if desired.

  4. Let the cordial mature for one month.

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. Red currant + gingertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  3. Red currant + red raspberrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sugar + red raspberrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together49 recipes

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

  5. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Red currants
Provide the main fruit flavour and acidity, and the juice that gives the cordial its colour.
Whiskey
Extracts flavour from the currants and acts as a preservative in the finished cordial.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the currants.
Ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma that complements the fruit.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture through a flannel bag. Straining out the fine pulp and seeds clears the liquid. Filtering again after sweetening removes sediment that would otherwise cloud the cordial as it matures.

Swap the red raspberry

The recipe marks red raspberry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red currant, sugar, ginger):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Red raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red currant, 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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