Name: Cream of Absinthe
Ingredients: 250 g large absinthe leaves and flowering tops; 60 g small absinthe; 60 g dry peppermint leaves; 60 g green anise; 25 g fennel; 15 g sweet flag; peels of 2 lemons; 4 L alcohol (85°); 3 L water

Why it works: Anise and fennel share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 47 recipes. Both carry cis-anethole, which smells anise. The science ↓

Cream of Absinthe

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate the large absinthe, small absinthe, peppermint, green anise, fennel, sweet flag, and lemon peels in 4 liters of alcohol for 2 days.
Add 3 liters of water to the mixture.
Strain and bottle the liquid.

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.

Anise + fenneltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together47 recipes

Shared aroma: cis-anethole (anise).
Fennel + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together723 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Peppermint + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,583 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Peppermint + anisetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together38 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Peppermint + fenneltop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together119 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

Alcohol: Extracts the aromatic and bitter compounds from the herbs and peels into the liquid.
Large absinthe leaves and flowering tops: Provides the main bitter and herbal flavour that defines the drink.
Small absinthe: Adds more of the characteristic absinthe bitterness and herbal aroma.
Dry peppermint leaves: Adds cooling mint aroma that rounds out the herbal profile.
Green anise: Contributes the sweet, licorice-like aroma typical of anise drinks.