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Cinnamon Oil

A flavored oil made by macerating cinnamon and cloves in alcohol, then mixing with sugar syrup and water, and coloring with caramel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cinnamon Oil

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate

  1. Macerate the Ceylon cinnamon, Chinese cinnamon, and cloves in 2 liters of alcohol for 48 hours.

Dilute and sweeten

  1. Add 1 liter of distilled water and draw off 4 liters of the product.

  2. Mix 500 grams of sugar with 2 liters of water to create a syrup.

Blend and finish

  1. Combine the syrup with the product and bring the volume to 10 liters.

  2. Color with caramel and filter.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Ceylon cinnamon
Provides the main warm, aromatic flavor of the oil.
Chinese cinnamon
Adds a stronger, more pungent cinnamon aroma to the blend.
Cloves
Contributes a sharp, spicy aroma that rounds out the cinnamon.
Alcohol
Dissolves and extracts the aromatic compounds from the spices.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body through the syrup.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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