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Absinthe or Wormwood Cream

A wormwood-infused cream made with brandy, citrus zest, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Absinthe or Wormwood Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse and distill

  1. Infuse the wormwood and citrus zests in the brandy for 2 days.

  2. Distill the mixture to half its original quantity.

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the water over heat and let it cool.

Combine and bottle

  1. Mix the cooled sugar syrup with the brandy infusion.

  2. Strain the mixture and bottle it tightly.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Brandy + lemontop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Brandy
Serves as the alcoholic base that extracts and carries the herbal and citrus flavours.
Wormwood
Provides the bitter, herbal flavour that defines the liqueur.
Citrus zests
Add aromatic oils that brighten the flavour of the infusion.
Fine sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the wormwood.

The step that matters

Distill the mixture to half its original quantity. Distilling concentrates the aromatic compounds and alcohol while leaving heavier components behind. Stopping at the wrong volume changes both strength and flavour balance.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, 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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