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Holland Curacao

A liqueur made by infusing orange rind, cinnamon, and mace in alcohol, then distilling and sweetening with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,437 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Holland Curacao

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Mix the orange rind, cinnamon, mace, and alcohol in a large container.

  2. Allow the mixture to infuse for eight days.

Distill and sweeten

  1. Distill the infused mixture.

  2. Dissolve the crystallized sugar in water and add it to the distilled mixture. Stir well to combine.

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. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Orange + macetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,043 recipes

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

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

Orange rind
Supplies the citrus aroma and bitter flavor that define the liqueur.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma during the infusion.
Mace
Adds a delicate, nutmeg-like warm spice to the infusion.
Double proof alcohol
Extracts the aromatic oils and flavor compounds from the botanicals during infusion.
Crystallized sugar
Adds sweetness and body to balance the spirit and bitter citrus.

The step that matters

Distill the infused mixture. Distillation separates the alcohol and volatile aromas from heavier oils and solids. Heating too hard can scorch the mixture or carry bitter, harsh notes into the spirit, so the heat needs to be controlled.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, 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.

More curaçao recipes

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