Name: Spirit of Cuirasseau
Ingredients: 4 teaspoons cinnamon; 10 pints brandy; 2 teaspoons mace; Raspings of 24 Seville oranges

Why it works: Cinnamon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 3,437 recipes mention both. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Spirit of Cuirasseau

Ingredients

4 teaspoons cinnamon
10 pints brandy
2 teaspoons mace
Raspings of 24 Seville oranges

Directions

Prepare

Pound the cinnamon, mace, and orange raspings coarsely.
Combine with brandy in a container.

Infuse and distill

Infuse for one week.
Distill the mixture to yield 6 pints of spirit.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Cinnamon + brandytop 14% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together3,199 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together2,706 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Mace + orangetop 20% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together1,043 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Seville orange raspings: Supply the bitter orange peel oils that give the liqueur its characteristic citrus aroma.
Brandy: Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the spices and peel during infusion.
Cinnamon: Contributes warm, sweet spice aroma to the infused spirit.
Mace: Adds a delicate, warm spice aroma to the infused spirit.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

Clovebetter flavor fit
Nutmegbetter flavor fit
Allspicebetter flavor fit
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, brandy, orange. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.