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Drink

Compound Spirit of Aniseed

A distilled spirit infused with bruised aniseed and angelica seed, diluted with water to reduce bitterness.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Angelica and spirit work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 31 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Compound Spirit of Aniseed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bruise the aniseed and angelica seed.

  2. Combine the bruised seeds with 1 gallon of proof spirit.

Distill

  1. Add enough water to prevent a bad taste or flavor.

  2. Distill the mixture to draw off 1 gallon.

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. Angelica + spirittop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together31 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Aniseed
Provides the main sweet, licorice-like aroma that flavors the finished spirit.
Angelica seed
Adds a warm, earthy aroma that supports the aniseed flavor.
Proof spirit
Acts as the solvent that extracts aromatic compounds from the bruised seeds.

The step that matters

Distill the mixture to draw off 1 gallon. Distillation separates volatile aromatic compounds from the seeds and spirit, so stopping at the set volume controls how strong and clean the final flavor tastes.

“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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