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Liqueur Made with Spirits

A simple liqueur made by dissolving sugar in water, adding spirits, and letting it steep.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Spirit and sugar work together. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Liqueur Made with Spirits

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liqueur

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the cold water.

  2. Add the spirits to the sugar-water mixture and stir well.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

Filter and bottle

  1. Filter the liqueur through folded blotting paper in a funnel into a bottle.

  2. Adjust the strength of the liqueur to taste.

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. Spirit + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Spirits
Provide the alcohol base that gives the liqueur its strength and character.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body, balancing the strength of the spirits.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar fully in the water. Cold water dissolves sugar slowly, so undissolved crystals can stay behind. Making sure the sugar is completely dissolved before adding the spirits gives an even sweetness and a clear liqueur.

“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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