Name: Ginger Cordial
Ingredients: 1 gallon of whisky; 8 lemons; 4 pounds of sugar; ¼ pound of whole ginger biscuit; 1 quart of water; 4 pounds of red currants (optional, for summer)

Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Steep

Combine the whisky, lemons, and ginger in a large crock.
Let the mixture stand for three days, stirring daily.

Strain and bottle

Strain the mixture and add the sugar dissolved in the quart of water.
Stir until well mixed, then bottle the cordial.
It is ready for use immediately.

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.

Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,154 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Biscuit + red curranttop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together30 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Lemon + red curranttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together309 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Lemon + biscuittop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together697 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Whisky + gingertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together163 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Whisky: Extracts and carries the flavour of the lemons and ginger into the liquid.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and body, balancing the sharpness of the lemons and the bite of the spirit.
Lemons: Add acidity and aroma from the peel and juice.

Swap the red currant

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

Limefits better
Orangefits better
Cherryfits better
Red currantthe original

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