Name: Mint, Distilled Liqueur of
Ingredients: 1½ gallons brandy; 1 quart water; 3½ pounds sugar; 7 pints water

Why it works: Brandy and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Mint, Distilled Liqueur of

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

1½ gallons brandy
1 quart water
3½ pounds sugar
7 pints water

Directions

Infuse and distill

Infuse mint in 1½ gallons of brandy and 1 quart of water for several days.
Distill the mixture as usual.

Make the syrup and finish

Dissolve 3½ pounds of sugar in 7 pints of water.
Mix the syrup with the liqueur.
Run the whole mixture through a jelly bag.

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.

Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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: Acts as the alcohol base that extracts and carries the mint flavour.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and rounds out the sharpness of the spirit.
Mint (in the method): Provides the primary aroma and flavour of the liqueur.

“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.