Name: Cherry-brandy
Ingredients: 2/3 wide-necked bottles of small cherries (brandy-blacks); sifted sugar; good French brandy

Why it works: Brandy and sugar 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 ↓

Cherry-brandy

Ingredients

2/3 wide-necked bottles of small cherries (brandy-blacks)
sifted sugar
good French brandy

Directions

Fill the bottles

Fill the bottles with cherries to about two-thirds full.
Add sifted sugar to fill more than half of the remaining space.
Pour in enough French brandy to cover the fruit and reach the necks of the bottles.

Seal and rest

Cork the bottles securely.
Let them stand for two months before opening.

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.

Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Brandy and sugar 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

Brandy-blacks cherries: Provide the main fruit flavour and colour that the brandy slowly extracts.
Sifted sugar: Adds sweetness and draws juice from the cherries, balancing the brandy's sharpness.
French brandy: Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the fruit and preserves it.

“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.