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Vanilla Cream Liqueur

A liqueur made by infusing vanilla and amber in sugar water, then adding brandy and coloring with 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 sugar in water over heat until it boils once.

  2. Pour into a jar over vanilla and amber.

Infuse and bottle

  1. Let it cool, then add brandy.

  2. Cover and infuse for 6 days.

  3. Color with cochineal, filter, and bottle the liqueur.

  4. 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the liqueur.
Vanilla
Supplies the main aroma and flavor as it infuses.
Brandy
Acts as the alcohol base that extracts and preserves the flavors.
Cochineal
Adds red coloring to the finished liqueur.

The step that matters

Cover and infuse for 6 days. Flavor extraction depends on steady contact time between the alcohol and the vanilla. Covering the jar keeps alcohol from evaporating, so the infusion stays at full strength.

“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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