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Orange Essence
Carefully remove white silk of twelve fresh, very sound orange peels, thoroughly dry, place in a quart bottle and fill up with good alcohol. Tightly cover bottle, thoroughly shake, then let infuse for fifteen days before using. Lemon essence is prepared exactly the same as the above.
A citrus extract made by cold infusion rather than distillation, and the method still works. Two things decide the result: what kind of alcohol you use and how completely you keep the pith out.
- "White silk" means the pithThe instruction is to pare away the spongy white albedo under the coloured zest. All the aromatic oil sits in the outer coloured layer; the pith carries only bitterness, and any that goes into the bottle will still be there fifteen days later. A vegetable peeler or a zester takes the flavedo off cleanly.
- "Good alcohol" means drinkable alcoholIn a book of this period that meant a high-proof potable spirit: grain alcohol or a neutral spirit. Use food-grade ethanol such as 190-proof grain spirit where it is sold, or the strongest unflavoured vodka available. Never use denatured, methylated, rubbing or hardware-store alcohol; those are poisonous and are not interchangeable with drinking spirits despite the shared word.
- Strength matters more than timeCitrus oil dissolves far better in high-proof spirit than in 40 percent vodka. At 190 proof the extract is intense and clear; at 40 percent it will be weaker and may go cloudy, though it remains usable.
- Quantities in modern termsA quart bottle is about 950 ml. Twelve orange peels to a quart is generous — expect a strong extract. Scale down to three or four peels in a 250 ml jar if you want a working amount rather than a year's supply.
- Wash and dry the fruit firstModern citrus is usually waxed and often sprayed. Scrub under warm water and dry before peeling, or buy unwaxed fruit. "Thoroughly dry" the peel as well — surface water dilutes the spirit and invites cloudiness.
- Infusion and strainingFifteen days at room temperature, out of direct light, with an occasional shake, is about right; the peel will look pale and spent when the oil has moved into the alcohol. The original does not say to strain, but leaving peel in indefinitely turns the extract bitter — filter it out at the end.
- Yield and useTreat it as you would commercial extract: roughly half a teaspoon per cake or batch of custard, added off the heat where possible, since the aromatics are volatile. Kept sealed and dark, a high-proof extract lasts years.
- Lemon and beyondThe closing line is accurate — lemon works identically, as do grapefruit, lime and bergamot. Thin-skinned limes give the least oil for the effort.
Before commercial flavouring extracts became cheap and reliable, essences were routine household or restaurant work, and cookbooks of the period print them alongside sauces and stocks. Two methods competed: distilling the peel, which required a still, and simple maceration in spirit, which required only a bottle and patience — this is the second. It survives in the kitchen as the basis of homemade vanilla and citrus extracts. The insistence on "very sound" peels and thorough drying may reflect a practical concern, since bruised flesh or trapped moisture would ferment or mould in a bottle meant to sit for a fortnight. Filippini's book, drawn from his years in the Delmonico's kitchens, aims at exactly this kind of professional groundwork — the flavourings and preparations a cook was expected to have standing ready rather than buy.