Why it works: Mint and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,592 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Creme De Menthe
Ingredients
Directions
Infuse
Fill a 1 quart jar with fresh mint leaves and pour 2 cups of deodorized alcohol over them.
Let it stand for 3 hours, shaking occasionally.
Make the syrup
In the meantime, mix 1 quart of granulated sugar with 1 quart of hot water and boil for a few minutes to make a syrup.
Allow the syrup to cool.
Combine
Strain the alcohol into a pitcher and pour the cooled syrup into it, not the other way around.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Mint + sugartop 32% of all pairsAroma overlaplowMentioned together2,592 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fresh mint leaves
- Provide the characteristic mint aroma and flavor that the alcohol draws out.
- Deodorized alcohol
- Extracts the flavor compounds from the mint leaves and carries them into the liqueur.
- Granulated sugar
- Sweetens the liqueur and, dissolved in hot water, forms the syrup that balances the mint.
The step that matters
Pour the syrup into the alcohol, not the reverse. Adding the cooled syrup to the alcohol keeps the mixture mostly alcohol at first, so the syrup is stirred in and blends evenly instead of the sugar falling out of solution in a concentrated alcohol layer.
“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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