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To Prepare and Sweeten British Gin

A large batch of gin sweetened with sugar, rose water, lime water, and flavored with oil of vitriol, almonds, turpentine, juniper berries, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 258 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

To Prepare and Sweeten British Gin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cask

  1. Get an empty cask that holds about 133 gallons.

  2. Pour 120 gallons of clear rectified spirits into the cask.

Make the flavouring

  1. In a mortar, mix ¼ ounce oil of vitriol, ½ ounce oil of almonds, ¼ ounce oil of turpentine, 1 ounce oil of juniper berries, and ½ pint spirit of wine until well combined.

  2. Prepare ½ gallon of lime water and 1 gallon of rose water, then mix with the mortar ingredients until dissolved.

Sweeten and combine

  1. Add 25 pounds of sugar dissolved in 9 gallons of rain or boiled water to the mixture and stir well in the cask.

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. Almond + limetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together258 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Spirit + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together701 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Spirit + rosetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Spirit + limetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Oil of juniper berries
Provides the characteristic juniper aroma that defines gin.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the sharp alcohol and botanical flavours.
Rose water
Adds a floral aroma to the spirit.

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spirit, almond, wine, sugar, rose):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spirit, almond, wine, sugar, rose. 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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