Why it works: Lemon and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,351 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓
Lemon
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut the lemon rind into thin shreds.
Half fill three or four wide-mouthed bottles with the shreds.
Pour the spirits over the lemon peel.
Steep and store
Cork the bottles tightly and shake them occasionally for the first month.
Store in a cool, dark place; it will improve with age.
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.
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Lemon + brandytop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,351 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
- Lemon peel
- Supplies the aromatic oils and bitter-citrus flavour that infuse into the spirit.
- White whiskey or brandy
- Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the peel and preserves the finished liqueur.
The step that matters
Shaking the bottles during the first month. Shaking keeps the peel in contact with the spirit and spreads the extracted oils evenly, so infusion is uniform rather than concentrated where the shreds settle.
“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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