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Drink

Eau De Vie

A fruit brandy made by steeping orange or lemon rind in sugar, water, milk, and rum or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rum work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 967 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Eau De Vie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the citrus

  1. Shave the rind of the oranges or lemons.

  2. Squeeze the juice into a silver vessel and mix with the sugar.

Make the syrup

  1. Heat the mixture until clear, then dilute with spring water.

  2. Add warm milk and mix well.

Steep and bottle

  1. Combine with the fruit rind in a large glass bottle with rum or brandy.

  2. Cork tightly and shake daily for ten days.

  3. Filter through paper and bottle 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. Milk + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together967 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Orange + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together801 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  4. Orange + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Oranges or lemons
Provide the juice and rind that give the liqueur its citrus aroma and flavour.
Fine loaf sugar
Sweetens the liqueur and balances the acidity of the citrus juice.
Warm milk
Softens the sharp citrus notes and clarifies the liquid as it is mixed in.
Old rum or french brandy
Acts as the alcoholic base that extracts and preserves the citrus oils and flavour.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture until clear. Heating the citrus and sugar dissolves the sugar fully and lets proteins coagulate, so the milk added later clarifies the liquid instead of leaving it cloudy.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, rum. 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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