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Orange Liqueur

A homemade orange liqueur made with cloves, spirits, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and spirit work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 152 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Orange Liqueur

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Stick the cloves into the Seville orange and place it in an earthen jar.

  2. Add the rectified spirits or gin and let it sit for one month.

Sweeten and finish

  1. Boil the loaf sugar with the water until dissolved.

  2. Pour the sugar syrup into the jar with the spirits and let it sit for another month.

  3. Filter the liqueur through blotting paper, then pour it into bottles.

  4. Cork the bottles securely and store for use.

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. Clove + spirittop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Spirit + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

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

  3. Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Clove and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Cloves
Add a warm, spicy aroma that flavours the infused liqueur.
Rectified spirits or gin
Extracts the oils and flavour from the orange and cloves into the liquid.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the orange and spirit.
Seville orange (in the method)
Provides the main citrus oils and bitter-sweet flavour of the liqueur.

The step that matters

Let the spirit infuse for the full month before adding the syrup. Citrus oils and clove compounds dissolve gradually into alcohol over time. Adding the syrup too early or skipping the second rest can leave the flavour thin and harsh.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spirit, 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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