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Cinnamon Cordial

A sweet alcoholic beverage flavored with cassia oil and lemon essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cassia and lemon work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 49 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cinnamon Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the spirit with the oil of cassia and essence of lemon.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in the water.

  3. Add the sugar solution to the spirit mixture and filter.

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. Cassia + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together49 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Cassia + spirittop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cassia + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Oil of cassia
Provides the main cinnamon aroma and flavor.
Spirit
Carries the flavoring oils and helps keep the finished cordial stable.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the finished cordial.

The step that matters

Add the sugar solution to the spirit mixture and filter. Flavoring oils separate poorly from water-based liquids and can cloud or settle out, so the mixture should be combined with care and filtered to produce a clear, even cordial.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cassia, spirit, 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.

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