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Anise Water

Anise Water is a distilled anise and citrus spirit infused with cinnamon and orange zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Anise and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 117 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Anise Water

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Rub the anise seeds to remove dust and combine with brandy in a jar.

  2. Add orange zests and bruised cinnamon; let infuse for several days.

Distill

  1. Distill the mixture over moderate heat, adding 4 pints of water.

Sweeten and finish

  1. Make a syrup with sugar and a quart less water; heat until dissolved.

  2. Combine the hot syrup with the infused spirits, stirring until hot but not boiling.

  3. Transfer to a jar, seal, and let sit overnight; filter before serving.

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. Anise + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Anise + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Anise seed
Supplies the dominant licorice-like aroma of the finished spirit.
Brandy
Alcohol base that extracts and carries the aromatic oils from the flavourings.
Orange zest
Adds bright citrus aroma from its peel oils.
Cinnamon
Adds a warm, woody aroma that rounds out the anise.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup that is blended into the spirits.

The step that matters

Combining the hot syrup with the spirits. Keeping the mixture hot but not boiling matters because boiling drives off alcohol and volatile aroma compounds, which would weaken the anise and orange flavour.

Swap the anise

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (brandy, orange, cinnamon, sugar, syrup, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Anisethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, orange, cinnamon, sugar, syrup, egg. 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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