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Vanilla Liqueur

A vanilla liqueur made by infusing sugar syrup with vanilla, amber, and brandy.

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 Liqueur

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in 3 pints of filtered water in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Pour the boiling syrup over the stick vanilla and amber in a bowl.

  4. Let the mixture cool completely.

Infuse and bottle

  1. Add the brandy and cover tightly.

  2. Let it infuse for 6 days.

  3. Color with a little prepared cochineal, then filter and bottle.

  4. Cork tightly and seal the bottles.

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

Best loaf sugar
Dissolves into the water to form a sweet syrup that balances the brandy.
Brandy
Acts as the alcohol base that extracts and carries the vanilla flavor.
Stick vanilla
Provides the main aroma and flavor as it infuses into the spirit.

The step that matters

Let the syrup cool completely before adding the brandy. Adding brandy to hot syrup can drive off alcohol and aroma through evaporation and can weaken the vanilla's delicate volatile flavor compounds. Cooling first keeps the spirit's flavor intact.

“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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