Skip to main content
Drink

Clove Liqueur

A homemade liqueur made by braising cloves and coriander seed, infusing with sugar, cherries, and gin for one month.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and coriander match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,221 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Clove Liqueur

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Braise the cloves and coriander seed.

  2. Infuse all ingredients together for one month.

  3. After a month, 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. Clove + coriandertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,221 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + gintop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Clove + gintop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26 recipes

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

  4. Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Coriander + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,749 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Clove and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Cloves
Provide the dominant spiced aroma that defines the liqueur.
Coriander seed
Adds a warm, citrusy aroma that rounds out the spice.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and body to balance the spice and alcohol.
Black cherries
Contribute fruit flavour and colour to the infusion.
Gin
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the botanicals over the month.

The step that matters

Braise the cloves and coriander seed. Gentle heat before infusing helps release the aromatic oils in the spices. Skipping or overheating this step can leave the flavour flat or bitter, so the spices should warm without scorching.

Swap the coriander

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, sugar, gin. 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

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes