Name: Cinnamon Wafer
Ingredients: 1 pound cinnamon bark, bruised; 1½ gallons water; 1 pint brandy

Why it works: Cinnamon and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,199 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Cinnamon Wafer

Ingredients

1 pound cinnamon bark, bruised
1½ gallons water
1 pint brandy

Directions

Steep the cinnamon bark in water and brandy for two days.
Distill off one gallon of the mixture.

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.

Cinnamon + brandytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,199 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cinnamon bark: Provides the main cinnamon aroma and flavour as its oils dissolve into the liquid during steeping.
Brandy: Acts as a solvent that extracts cinnamon flavour and aroma compounds from the bark.

“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.