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Drink

Compound Cloves

A liqueur made by steeping fennel, aniseed, coriander, juniper berries, cinnamon, and cloves in brandy, then sweetened with sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Compound Cloves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Pound the fennel, aniseed, coriander, juniper berries, cinnamon, and cloves coarsely.

  2. Combine the mixture in a large bottle with 3 pints of brandy.

  3. Expose the bottle to sunlight or warmth for 4 weeks.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil ½ pound of sugar in 1 pint of water, skim, and let cool.

Blend and bottle

  1. Add the brandy mixture to the cooled syrup.

  2. Strain or filter the mixture and fill in bottles.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Fennel + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together426 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Fennel + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together175 recipes

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

  4. Fennel + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together350 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Coriander + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,635 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Brandy
Serves as the alcohol base that extracts flavour from the spices and keeps the liqueur stable.
Juniper berries
Contribute resinous, piney aroma that defines the character of the liqueur.
Cloves
Add strong warm aroma that dominates the spice blend.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body, balancing the alcohol and spice bitterness.
Aniseed
Adds sweet, licorice-like aroma to the blend.

The step that matters

Leaving the bottle in sunlight or warmth for 4 weeks. Alcohol extracts flavour from the coarsely pounded spices slowly, and warmth speeds this extraction. Too short a time leaves the liqueur weakly flavoured, so the full four weeks matters.

Swap the coriander

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fennel, cinnamon, clove, brandy, 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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