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Spirit of Mixed Spice

A spirit infused with black pepper, allspice, and nutmeg, steeped for ten days and then strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spirit of Mixed Spice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spices

  1. Finely pound the black pepper and allspice.

  2. Grate the nutmeg.

Infuse and bottle

  1. Infuse the spices in 1 pint of spirit for ten days.

  2. Strain the mixture and bottle it.

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. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Nutmeg + spirittop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together107 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Allspice + spirittop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat and aroma to the spirit.
Allspice
Contributes warm, sweet aromatic notes that blend with the other spices.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, woody aroma and depth to the infused flavor.
Spirit
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavor compounds from the spices.

The step that matters

Infuse the spices for the full ten days. Alcohol draws aromatic compounds out of the spices slowly. Stopping early leaves the flavor weak and unbalanced, while the full infusion time lets the spice character develop.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, allspice, spirit. 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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