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Vanilla, Creme of

A vanilla-flavored liqueur made by infusing sugar, water, vanilla, amber, and brandy, then coloring with cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Vanilla, Creme of

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the broken sugar in the purified river water over the fire.

  2. Once it boils, pour it into a jar containing the vanilla and amber.

Infuse and finish

  1. Let it cool completely, then add the brandy.

  2. Cover the vessel and let it infuse for six days.

  3. Color the mixture with a little prepared cochineal.

  4. Filter the mixture and bottle the liquor.

  5. Cork the bottles tightly and seal the corks.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together806 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Broken sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the finished liqueur.
Vanilla
Supplies the main vanilla aroma as it infuses into the liquid.
Brandy
Acts as the alcohol base that extracts and preserves the flavours.
Purified river water
Dissolves the sugar to form a syrup that carries the flavour.

The step that matters

Let the cooled mixture cool completely before adding the brandy. Alcohol added to a hot syrup can evaporate and carry off aroma, and heat can dull the delicate vanilla flavour. Cooling first keeps the aroma in the liquid.

“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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