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Drink

Geneva Bitters

A bitter liqueur made from egg yolks, gentian root, orange peel, and Geneva gin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and gin work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 158 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Geneva Bitters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Carefully separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs.

  2. Combine the egg yolks, gentian root, and orange peel in a bowl.

Steep and bottle

  1. Pour the Geneva over the mixture and let it steep for 2 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture through cap paper and bottle it for use.

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 + gintop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together158 recipes

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

  2. Egg + orangetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Egg + gintop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together67 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Egg and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,696 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and body to the infusion.
Gentian root
Provides the bitter flavor that defines the bitters.
Orange peel
Adds bright citrus aroma and a light sweetness of flavor.
Geneva (gin)
Acts as the solvent that draws flavor out of the botanicals during steeping.

The step that matters

Separating the yolks carefully. Egg whites contain mostly water and protein, and any left in the mixture can add cloudiness and an unwanted texture to the finished bitters.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, gin):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, gin. 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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