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Anisette De Bordeaux

A liqueur made by infusing green anise, lemon zest, and cinnamon in alcohol, then sweetened with sugar and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Anise and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 117 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Anisette De Bordeaux

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Infuse 250 grams of green anise, lemon zest, and a little cinnamon in 6 liters of alcohol for 4 months.

Blend and bottle

  1. Strain the infusion and mix it with 3 liters of water and 1.5 kilograms of clarified sugar.

  2. Filter the mixture 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.

  1. Anise + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Anise + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together91 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Green anise
Provides the characteristic licorice-like aroma that defines the anisette.
Alcohol
Extracts the aromatic oils from the anise, lemon zest and cinnamon during infusion.
Clarified sugar
Adds sweetness and body, softening the strong alcohol and anise flavour.
Lemon zest
Adds bright citrus aroma that lifts the anise flavour.

The step that matters

Infuse for the full 4 months. Aromatic compounds from anise and zest extract slowly into alcohol. A shorter infusion leaves the flavour weak and thin, so the spirit needs the full resting time before straining.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (anise, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against anise, cinnamon, sugar. 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.

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