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Orange Liqueur

A gin-based liqueur flavored with orange peel, saffron, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and saffron work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 185 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Orange Liqueur

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the peel from the oranges very thin.

  2. Combine the orange peel and saffron in the gin.

  3. Soak each lump of sugar in water until it absorbs all the moisture.

  4. Add the soaked sugar to the gin mixture.

Steep and bottle

  1. Cork tightly and store in a warm place for 1 month.

  2. After a month, filter and bottle the liqueur.

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. Orange + saffrontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together185 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  4. Orange + gintop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together158 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + saffrontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together650 recipes

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

Orange and sugar 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

Seville oranges
Peel provides the characteristic bitter-orange aroma and flavour as it steeps in the gin.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the liqueur and softens its bitterness, balancing the orange peel.
Saffron
Adds colour and a subtle floral aroma to the liqueur.
Gin
Acts as the solvent that extracts oils and flavour from the peel and saffron.

The step that matters

Cutting the peel very thin. Only the outer coloured zest should be taken, since the white pith beneath is bitter and can make the liqueur harsh. Thin peel also exposes more surface for the gin to extract aromatic oils.

Swap the saffron

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, 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.

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