Why it works: Sugar and whisky are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,008 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Cherry Bounce
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cherries
Crush the sour and sweet cherries in a wooden vessel with a mallet, breaking all the stones.
Transfer the crushed cherries to a deep stone jar.
Macerate
Add the granulated sugar and cover with the whisky.
Stir well and pour the mixture into a demijohn.
Cork tightly and let it stand for one month, shaking daily.
After one month, let it sit for another month without shaking.
Strain and bottle
Strain the mixture and bottle it.
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.
-
Sugar + whiskytop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,008 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sour cherries
- Provide tartness and fruit flavour that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
- Sweet cherries
- Add natural sugar and mellow fruit flavour to the infusion.
- Granulated sugar
- Sweetens the liqueur and helps draw juice out of the cherries.
- Best whisky
- Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the cherries and preserves the mixture.
The step that matters
Cork tightly and shake daily during the first month. A tight cork keeps alcohol and aroma from escaping and limits oxidation, while daily shaking mixes sugar and fruit into the spirit so flavour extracts evenly.
“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.
You might also like
Vegetable Soup350 recipes
Raspberry Vinegar214 recipes
Brown Coffee with Egg175 recipes
Blackberry Cordial129 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.