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Cinnamon Cordial

A spirit infused with bruised cinnamon, strained and filtered to produce a cordial.

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 ↓

Cinnamon Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bruise the cinnamon in a mortar.

  2. Put the bruised cinnamon into a bottle.

  3. Add the spirits of wine to the bottle.

  4. Strain the mixture through fine muslin before filtering through blotting paper to avoid clogging.

  5. Proceed as you would in making lemon brandy.

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. Cinnamon + spirittop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cinnamon + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Cinnamon
Provides the main flavour and aroma, steeping into the spirit as it sits.
Spirits of wine
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the bruised cinnamon.

The step that matters

Straining through muslin before blotting paper. Fine cinnamon particles can clog filter paper if not strained first. A coarse pre-strain through muslin removes most solids so the finer filtering runs cleanly and leaves a clear liquid.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Rosemaryfits better
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Mintfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

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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