Why it works: Anise and sugar work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 328 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Anise Cokdial
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Boil the anise seeds with sugar and water until it becomes very thick.
When cold, strain the mixture.
Add alcohol and bottle
Add ¼ quart of alcohol to ¾ quart of syrup.
Bottle the mixture and shake every day for several days.
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.
-
Anise + sugartop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together328 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Anise seed
- Provides the main anise flavour and aroma of the cordial.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cordial and gives the boiled syrup its thick body.
- Alcohol
- Carries the anise flavour and helps preserve the finished cordial.
The step that matters
Cool the syrup before adding the alcohol. Alcohol evaporates quickly when heated, so adding it to hot syrup would lose much of its strength and aroma. Letting the syrup cool first keeps the spirit in the finished cordial.
“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.
You might also like
Vegetable Soup350 recipes
Raspberry Vinegar214 recipes
Brown Coffee with Egg175 recipes
Blackberry Cordial129 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.