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Drink

Irish Usquebaugh

A spiced raisin liqueur made with brandy or whiskey, raisins, spices, and rock candy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Irish Usquebaugh

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spices

  1. Pound the raisins and mix in the orange zest with lumps of sugar.

  2. Bruise well, then add the cloves, cardamom seeds, and grated nutmeg.

Steep

  1. Put the mixture in a jar and add the brandy or whiskey and rock candy.

  2. Add some brown coloring and shake the jar every day.

Strain and bottle

  1. After 2 weeks, strain the mixture and bottle it for use.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,114 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cardamom + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together249 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Orange + cardamomtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Add fruit sweetness and body, and their sugars soften the spirit's sharpness.
Brandy or whiskey
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavor from the fruit, zest and spices.
Cloves
Contribute warm, pungent aroma that the alcohol draws out over time.
Cardamom seeds
Add a fragrant, citrusy-spiced aroma to the infused spirit.
Orange zest
Supplies bright citrus oils that add aroma to the spirit.
Rock candy
Adds sweetness that slowly dissolves into the spirit.

The step that matters

Bruising the spices. Bruising breaks open the cell walls of the cloves, cardamom and nutmeg, so their aromatic oils can release into the alcohol. Whole, unbruised spices steep slowly and give a weak flavor.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, clove, cardamom, nutmeg, brandy):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, clove, cardamom, nutmeg, brandy. 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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