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Strawberry Cordial

A sweet alcoholic beverage made from stewed strawberries, sugar, and white brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Strawberry Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Stew the strawberries for 20 minutes.

  2. Squeeze the strawberries through a linen bag to extract the juice.

Mix and steep

  1. Mix the juice with 1 pound of sugar and 1 pint of white brandy.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a demijohn and let it stand for 2 weeks.

Filter and bottle

  1. Filter the cordial through a coarse muslin or fine sieve.

  2. Bottle the filtered cordial.

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. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Strawberries
Provide the juice, flavour and colour that form the body of the cordial.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the strawberry juice.
White brandy
Adds alcohol that preserves the cordial and carries the fruit aroma.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture stand for 2 weeks. Time in the demijohn lets the sugar dissolve fully and the fruit and alcohol blend. Cutting it short can leave the cordial harsh, cloudy, or unevenly flavoured.

“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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