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 ↓
Essence of Allspice
Ingredients
Directions
Mix the oil of pimento and strong spirit of wine together gradually.
Add a few drops of the mixture to a pint of gravy or mulled wine to impart the flavor of allspice.
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.
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Spirit + winetop 9% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together701 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Oil of pimento
- Provides the concentrated allspice aroma and flavor that the tincture carries into other dishes.
- Strong spirit of wine
- Acts as the solvent that dilutes the oil so only a few drops are needed for flavoring.
The step that matters
Mixing the oil into the spirit gradually. Essential oils do not dissolve readily in alcohol, so adding the oil slowly while mixing helps it disperse evenly rather than clumping or separating. An even blend means each few drops delivers consistent flavor.
“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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