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Orange Liqueur

A homemade orange liqueur made by steeping cloves in oranges, spirits, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,987 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Orange Liqueur

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stick 6-8 cloves into each orange.

  2. Combine the oranges, spirits, and sugar in a jar and cover the jar tightly.

Steep

  1. Stir occasionally for 2 months.

Filter and bottle

  1. Filter the mixture through blotting paper.

  2. Bottle the liqueur 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 + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Spirit + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Spirit + clovetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Spirit + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Strong spirits
Dissolves and extracts flavour compounds from the oranges and cloves over time.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness drawn from the orange peel.
Oranges
Supply aromatic peel oils and juice that give the liqueur its citrus flavour.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice notes that build during steeping.

The step that matters

Cover the jar tightly. A tight seal keeps the alcohol from evaporating and limits air getting in, so the spirit stays at full strength and the flavours extract steadily over the long steep.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spirit, sugar, orange. 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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