Skip to main content
Drink

Macaroni Cordial

A brandy-based cordial flavored with bitter almonds, angelica root, sugar, eau de mille-fleurs, distilled water, and lemon essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Angelica and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 189 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Macaroni Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse and distill

  1. Infuse bitter almonds and angelica root in brandy for 14 days, shaking the vessel frequently.

  2. After 14 days, distill the mixture in a water bath to obtain 5 pints of flavored spirit.

Blend and filter

  1. Mix the distilled spirit with sugar, eau de mille-fleurs, and distilled water.

  2. Add essence of lemon and filter through blotting paper.

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. Angelica + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Almond + angelicatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Brandy + almondtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 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

Bitter almonds
Contribute the characteristic almond aroma and flavour to the infused spirit.
Brandy
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the almonds and angelica root.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the finished cordial.
Angelica root
Adds herbal, aromatic notes to the infused spirit.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (brandy, angelica, sugar, lemon):

  1. Pistachiofits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, angelica, sugar, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesAlmond MilkAlmond Milk18 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipes