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Lemon Cordial Lemon Brandy

A lemon cordial made by steeping lemon rind and optional almonds in wine spirits, then sweetened with a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Lemon Cordial Lemon Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Wash the lemons and pare the rind off very thinly, then divide it into small shreds.

  2. Put the shreds into a bottle and add the spirits of wine and optional almonds.

  3. Cork the bottle and let it stand for 6 days.

Add syrup and clarify

  1. Make a syrup by boiling 1 pound of sugar in water, then let it cool.

  2. Pour the syrup into the bottle, shake well, and let it stand for another 6 days.

  3. Filter the mixture through blotting paper to clarify.

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. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Lemons
Their thin rind supplies the main citrus aroma and flavour that the spirit draws out.
Spirits of wine
Acts as the solvent that extracts oils and flavour from the lemon rind.
Treble-refined sugar
Sweetens the liqueur and balances the sharpness of the citrus oils.

The step that matters

Paring the rind very thinly. Only the outer zest carries the aromatic oils; thick pith adds bitterness that the sugar cannot fully mask once the mixture is infused.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, spirit, wine, sugar):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Milletfits less well
  4. Beansfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, spirit, wine, 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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