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 ↓
Brandied Cherries
Ingredients
Directions
Combine equal parts sugar and cherries in a pot.
Cook the mixture slowly for five hours.
When transferring to jars, add ½ cup of brandy to each pint jar.
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).
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
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and draws out its juices to form a syrup.
- Cherries
- Provide the fruit, flavor and juices that the sugar draws out.
- Brandy
- Adds aroma and flavor, and its alcohol helps preserve the fruit.
The step that matters
Cooking slowly for five hours. Sugar pulls juice from the cherries, and low, slow heat lets that liquid thicken into syrup without scorching the sugar or breaking down the fruit too quickly.
“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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