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Pomercmzen Liqueur — Orange Liqueur

A homemade orange liqueur made with Seville orange peel, saffron, spirit, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Pomercmzen Liqueur — Orange Liqueur

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Infuse the orange peel and saffron in the spirit for a week in the sun.

Sweeten and rest

  1. Moisten the sugar with enough water to absorb quickly, then add to the spirit bottle.

  2. Let it stand for an additional month in a warm place.

Filter and bottle

  1. Filter the liqueur from the peel and bottle it for use.

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. Orange + spirittop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

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

  3. Saffron + spirittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Spirit + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

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

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
Their peel supplies the bitter orange aroma and flavour that the spirit draws out.
Saffron
Adds a golden colour and a subtle floral, earthy note to the liqueur.
Pure spirit or gin
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the peel and saffron.
Sugar
Sweetens the liqueur and balances the bitterness of the orange peel.

The step that matters

Filter the liqueur from the peel. Leaving peel in too long or not removing it can add excess bitterness and pith flavour, so the liqueur should be strained once the infusion is done.

Swap the saffron

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits about as well
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, spirit, sugar. 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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