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Syrup d’Absintlie

A syrup made by steeping wormwood in boiling water, sweetened with sugar, and blended with egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Syrup d’Absintlie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

  1. Place wormwood in a basin and pour boiling water over it.

  2. Let it steep for 4 hours on a hot surface.

  3. Strain the mixture through linen.

Make the syrup

  1. Beat the egg white until frothy.

  2. Melt the sugar.

  3. Simmer until done.

  4. Combine the strained decoction with the melted sugar.

  5. Add the beaten egg white to the mixture.

  6. Bottle the syrup 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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and the thick body of the syrup.
Egg white
Its proteins foam and rise to the surface, helping clarify the syrup as it cooks.
Tops of wormwood
Supplies the bitter flavour infused into the water.

The step that matters

Simmer until done. The record gives no time or visual cue for this step. Under-cooking leaves the syrup thin and watery, while over-cooking can darken or scorch the sugar, so watch for the syrup to thicken and become clear.

“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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