Name: Raspberry and Strawberry Sirup
Ingredients: 2 quarts ripe berries; 2 pounds granulated sugar; ⅓ cup brandy

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 ↓

Raspberry and Strawberry Sirup

Ingredients

2 quarts ripe berries
2 pounds granulated sugar
⅓ cup brandy

Directions

Make the syrup

Squeeze the juice from the berries and strain it.
In a preserving kettle, combine the juice with the sugar.
Boil for a moment, skim off any foam, and let it cool.

Bottle

Pour the syrup into small bottles, adding ⅓ cup of brandy to each.
Fill the bottles completely with the syrup.

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.

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

Ripe berries: Provide the juice that gives the syrup its raspberry and strawberry flavour.
Granulated sugar: Sweetens the syrup and dissolves into the juice to thicken it and help preserve it.
Brandy: Adds aroma and a warm, spirited flavour to the syrup in each bottle.

“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.