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Vanilla Cream Liqueur

A vanilla-flavored liqueur made by infusing sugar, water, vanilla, amber, brandy, and cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Vanilla Cream Liqueur

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the purified water over heat.

  2. Once it has boiled, pour it into a jar over the vanilla and amber.

Infuse and finish

  1. Let it cool completely, then add the brandy.

  2. Cover the jar and let it infuse for six days.

  3. Color the mixture with a little prepared cochineal.

  4. Filter the liqueur and bottle it.

  5. Cork the bottles tightly and seal the corks.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together806 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Broken sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the finished liqueur.
Brandy
Acts as the alcoholic base that extracts and preserves the vanilla flavour.
Vanilla
Supplies the main aroma as its flavour compounds steep into the liquid.

The step that matters

Let the syrup cool completely before adding the brandy. Brandy is alcohol, and adding it to hot syrup can drive off aroma and make the flavour harsh. Cooling first keeps the delicate vanilla notes intact.

“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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