Name: Currant Cordial
Ingredients: 2 quarts whiskey; 2 quarts red currants, picked over; 2½ pounds sugar; 2 ounces African ginger root

Why it works: Red currant and ginger work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Currant Cordial

Ingredients

2 quarts whiskey
2 quarts red currants, picked over
2½ pounds sugar
2 ounces African ginger root

Directions

Infuse

Combine whiskey and red currants in a large container and let stand for at least 24 hours.
Strain the mixture to remove the currants.

Sweeten and bottle

Add sugar and African ginger root, then let it stand for another 24 hours.
Strain the mixture again and bottle it.

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.

Red currant + gingertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together59 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together14,054 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,156 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Red currants: Provide the fruit flavor and tartness that give the cordial its character.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the currants and whiskey.
Whiskey: Extracts flavor from the currants and ginger and preserves the finished cordial.
African ginger root: Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the cordial.