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Abslntlie Cream

A sweet absinthe-based liqueur made with wormwood, lemon zest, oranges, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Abslntlie Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Pound the wormwood and infuse it in the brandy with the lemon zest and sliced oranges for two days.

  2. Distill the liquor to half the original quantity.

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the water and let it cool.

Blend and bottle

  1. Mix the cooled sugar syrup thoroughly with the brandy and wormwood infusion.

  2. Strain the mixture and bottle it in tightly corked bottles.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 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

Brandy
Serves as the alcoholic base that extracts and carries the herbal flavours.
Wormwood heads
Provides the bitter herbal flavour that defines the absinthe character.
Sugar
Sweetens the liquor and softens the bitterness of the wormwood.
Lemon zest
Adds bright citrus aroma to the infusion.
Oranges
Contribute fruity citrus flavour and some acidity to the infusion.

The step that matters

Distill the liquor to half the original quantity. Distilling concentrates the alcohol and volatile aromatic compounds from the infusion while leaving heavier, less pleasant material behind. Stopping at the wrong point changes the strength and flavour balance of the final liquor.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, orange, 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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