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Spirit of Lemon-peel

A lemon-flavored spirit made by infusing rectified wine with lemon essential oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Spirit and wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 701 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Spirit of Lemon-peel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the spirits of wine with the essential oil of lemons.

  2. Put the mixture into a small bottle.

  3. Stopper the bottle tightly until needed.

Use

  1. Add 3 to 4 drops of this mixture to any dish for lemon flavor.

  2. Use a few drops to convert a tumblerful of water into lemonade.

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. Spirit + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together701 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Spirit + lemontop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together256 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rectified spirits of wine
Acts as a carrier that disperses the lemon oil evenly when added to food or water.
Essential oil of lemons
Supplies the concentrated lemon aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Adding only 3 to 4 drops at a time. Essential oils are highly concentrated, so a few drops carry strong flavor. Adding too much at once can make a dish taste bitter or overpowering, and it is easier to add more than to remove excess.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spirit, wine. 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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