Formulas for many aperitifs, bitters, and liqueurs are still family affairs. Secrets are handed down on deathbeds, with the curtains drawn and the servants in town on errands. The longevity of these arcane elixirs has given outsiders plenty of time to puzzle out the recipes. Outside chemists’ best guesses follow.
Angostura Bitters are the family secret of the Siegerts of Trinidad, descendents of Dr. J.G.B. Siegert. The family is said to eat their food heavily laced with the bitters. The German Dr. Siegert served in the army of Simon Bolivar on the South American mainland. In 1824 Dr. Siegert invented the bitters as a tonic for Bolivar’s army. The bitters proved a success, and Siegert secretly moved the family business to the more stable political turf of Trinidad. For a long time after its creation, the recipe was communicated only by word of mouth. At last report, the recipe has been written down, the paper torn in two, and the halves locked in separate bank vaults.
Although Angostura Bitters enter into recipes for Manhattans, Old-Fashioneds, Rob Roys, and countless other mixed-drink recipes, few have any idea what’s in Angostura Bitters. In Islands in the Stream, Ernest Hemingway likens the flavor to varnish. The odor suggests plum pudding. Taken straight up (as the label suggests to stimulate the appetite or relieve flatulence), Angostura Bitters are thoroughly unpleasant. The taste is so bad that Angostura Bitters are exempted from the alcoholic-beverage tax. The reasoning is that no one could down enough of the 90-proof bitters to get drunk.
The label admits only three ingredients: water, alcohol, and gentian. Gentian is a wild flower with a bitter root. The rest is “harmless vegetable flavoring extractives and vegetable coloring matter.” There seems not to be any sugar.
Angostura bark is to Angostura Bitters what cocaine is to Coca-Cola. The label eagerly denies angostura bark as an ingredient. According to the label, the bitters aren’t named after angostura bark, but rather after the town of Angostura, Venezuela (since renamed Ciudad Bolivar). Yet the Encyclopaedia Britannica and other older sources claim angostura bark is—or was—the bitters’ principal flavoring.
What’s wrong with angostura bark? Angostura is a small tree from northern Brazil and adjacent Venezuela. Its bark is spicy-bitter and was used medicinally. Then scandal erupted when someone discovered that the “angostura bark” of commerce was often adulterated with the poisonous bark of the strychnine tree. Presumably, Angostura Bitters were made from this same contaminated angostura bark. The family has always refused to discuss ingredients, but apparently Angostura Bitters were hastily reformulated to exclude angostura bark.
Now gentian is mostly responsible for the bitter-Moxie flavor of the bitters. According to economic botanist Julia F. Morton, Sc.D., of the University of Miami (Fla.), two other flavorings are bitter orange peel and galangal. Citrus peel enters into many other bitter drinks, such as Campari. Galangal is a pungent root spice, related to ginger, that otherwise turns up in Indonesian cooking. Another widely suspected ingredient is cloves.
The most complete published breakdown of Angostura Bitters appears in the Source Book of Flavors by Henry B. Heath (Westport, Conn.: AVI Publishing Co., 1981). Heath’s Angostura recipe is not a complete chemical analysis, but it is an expert guess, based on the best available information, about what goes into Angostura Bitters. Heath’s recipe uses angostura bark rather than gentian and thus seems to simulate the old-style bitters. In order of declining quantity, it calls for:
| 10 parts | Angostura Bark |
| 4 parts | Bitter Orange Fruit |
| 4 parts | Bitter Orange Peel |
| 4 parts | Cinnamon Bark |
| 4 parts | Tonka Beans |
| 3 parts | Cloves |
| 2 parts | Calisaya Bark |
| 2 parts | Cardamon |
| 2 parts | Carob |
| 2 parts | Ginger |
| 2 parts | Lemon Peel |
| 1 part | Galangal |
| 1 part | Zedoary |
According to Heath, all ingredients are percolated with 50 percent alcohol. Two ounces of the resulting concentrated extract are used to flavor a gallon of the finished product.
What about the bright pink color Angostura Bitters impart to gin? It must come from a vegetable dye. None of the flavoring ingredients have much color when diluted to final strength.
Benedictine boasts the oldest secret recipe of any popular food or drink. It was invented at the Benedictine Abbey of Fécamp by Dom Bernardo Vincelli in 1510. For centuries the recipe was concocted only by monks. Now the formula is in the more secular hands of a family-owned corporation. It is still made at Fécamp, though in a replica of the original monastery. According to Grossman’s Guide, only three people are ever permitted to know the complete recipe.
Benedictine fairly taunts its imitators with a Salon de Contrefaçons (Hall of Counterfeits) at its distillery. The Salon is a massive collection of the hundreds of imitation “Benedictines” produced around the globe.
The taste of true Benedictine is agreeable, sweet, and distinctive. The alcohol base is brandy. It is known that there are many ingredients; that they mixed in more than one step; and that the liqueur is aged for four years before bottling.
Fenaroli’s Handbook of Flavor Ingredients, an industry bible, argues knowingly that the gist of Benedictine flavor is three ingredients: citrus, angelica, and juniper berries. Angelica is a sweet, licorice-flavored herb of northern Europe; juniper berries, from the common shrub, are also used to flavor gin. Most flavor chemists agree with the Fenaroli assessment, but no one doubts that many other trace ingredients are used as well. Peppermint, cloves, and balm (sold in health-food stores for brewing a lemon-scented herb tea) are widely suspected.
In Food Flavorings, Joseph Merory gave a recipe for imitation Benedictine with twenty flavorings. The ingredients in the left-hand column below are soaked in thirty-three gallons of 40 percent alcohol for four days. Twenty gallons are removed for later use. The ingredients in the right-hand column are added to the remaining mixture. A day later, this entire mixture is distilled. The first ten gallons of distillate are mixed with the twenty gallons of filtered extract set aside on the fourth day. The result, a 100-proof flavoring, is mixed with sugar syrup, water, and brandy to yield the correct flavor intensity, sweetness, and proof.
| lbs. | |
| 7.5 | Angelica Root |
| 2.5 | Balm |
| 2.5 | Mugwort |
| 2.5 | Peppermint |
| 2.25 | Valencia Orange Peel |
| 2.0 | Coriander |
| 1.5 | Calamus |
| 1.25 | Hyssop (Herbs) |
| 1.25 | Hyssop (Leaves) |
| 1.25 | Thyme |
| 1.0 | Arnica Blossom |
| 0.875 | Musk Seed |
| 0.5 | Cardamon Seeds |
| 0.5 | Cassia |
| 0.25 | Cloves |
| 0.15 | Nutmeg |
| 4.5 | Angelica Root |
| 4.5 | Calamus |
| 4.5 | Gentian |
| 4.5 | Mace |
| 2.25 | Spanish Orange Peel |
| 1.875 | Cardamon Seeds |
| 1.875 | Cloves |
| 1.875 | Roman Chamomile |
| 1.25 | Thyme |
Campari Milan, Italy 48 proof
Gaspare Campari’s crimson aperitif is sold as a bottled carbonated beverage in Europe. The product sold in the United States is the “syrup” from which Campari soda can be made. Chemical analysis shows that syrup is the right word. By weight, about 23 percent of Campari is sugar—a sucrose megadose for a drink that does not, to the first-time drinker, taste sweet at all. Whatever is in Campari, it is bitter enough to mask a cloying base. An even sweeter version of Campari is sold as an after-dinner cordial.
There is no question that citrus oils are the primary flavorings. They are probably bitter orange, with some lemon and possibly some sweet orange. There is less agreement on the other flavorings. According to Guido Zamarini, a flavor chemist who produced a Campari imitation in Mexico, Campari’s chiaroscuro undertones come from rhubarb and cocoa. Zamarini’s formula used rhubarb, quinine, oils of bitter orange, sweet orange, and lemon, cocoa, and gentian.
Heath’s Source Book of Flavors includes an “Italian Bitters” recipe—evidently intended as an approximation to Campari—in which angelica and other herbs back up the citrus. The recipe uses:
| l ¼lb. | Bitter Orange Peel |
| 1 lb. | Angelica Root |
| 1 lb. | Buckbean Leaves |
| 1 lb. | Lemon Peel |
| 12 oz. | Anise |
| 12 oz. | Calamus |
| 12 oz. | Fennel |
| 12 oz. | Orris Root |
| 12 oz. | Wormwood Leaves |
| 8 oz. | Cinnamon |
| 7 oz. | Cloves |
| 5 oz. | Marjoram |
| 5 oz. | Sage |
| 5 oz. | Thyme |
| 2 oz. | Rosemary |
All are percolated with 50 percent alcohol; 2 ounces flavor a gallon of sweetened alcohol/water mixture. Campari’s color apparently is a combination of red carmine and brown caramel.
80 proof (yellow) and 110 proof (green)
The secret formula for Chartreuse was a gift from the Maréchal d’Estrées to the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble in 1607. It is still produced by Carthusian monks. It was slightly reformulated once—in 1757, by Brother Gérome Manbec. The secret almost fell out of the order’s control in the early part of this century. Legal problems forced the Carthusian fathers to flee France in 1901. All the order’s property, including the recipe, was to have been sold at auction. No copy of the recipe remained in France, however. The exiled fathers produced Chartreuse in Tarragona, Spain. After protracted litigation in France, the Carthusians were able to return to Voiron and resume production in France.
Green, yellow, and white (colorless) Chartreuse is produced. The green and yellow colors, it’s suspected, are as artificial as those of lemon and lime Kool-Aid. Green Chartreuse is more alcoholic than the yellow form. Some tasters claim slight flavor differences as well. Others think the “differences” are nothing more than the suggestive power of the two colors. Taste as well as chemical analysis show that both forms are ungodly sweet: about 28 percent sugar by weight in the yellow variety. A 750-milliliter bottle of yellow Chartreuse contains about half a pound of sugar.
Is Chartreuse a rip-off of Benedictine? Connoisseurs charge the two liqueurs are similar. (Presumably Chartreuse has been spared display in the Salon de Contrefaçons.) The comparison is more striking if you close your eyes and have someone give you sips of Benedictine and yellow Chartreuse. No one knows exactly how the Maréchal d’Estrées came by his recipe, but his gift came a century after the invention of Benedictine.
Like Benedictine, Chartreuse has a brandy base. Fenaroli’s Handbook contends that the basic Chartreuse flavor is a mélange of citrus, angelica, juniper berries, anise, and wormwood. Three of these five were listed as the primary flavorings of Benedictine. Anise provides a second, licoricelike note, not unlike angelica; wormwood, a constituent of vermouth, provides bitterness. The Fenaroli’s Handbook recipe for Chartreuse flavoring uses essential oils rather than raw spices and herbs:
| 60 parts | Lemon Oil |
| 20 parts | Anethol (main component of anise oil) |
| 15 parts | Juniper Oil |
| 7.1 parts | Clary Sage Oil |
| 4 parts | Hyssop Oil |
| 3 parts | Bitter Orange Oil |
| 3 parts | Mint Oil |
| 3 parts | Petitgrain Oil |
| 2.5 parts | Coriander Oil |
| 2.1 parts | Angelica Oil |
| 2.1 parts | Mace Oil |
| 2.1 parts | Wormwood Oil |
| 2 parts | Sweet Orange Oil |
| 1 part | Caraway Oil |
| 1 part | Cinnamon Oil |
| Trace | Lavender Oil |
One part of this oil mixture flavors about five thousand parts of liqueur. This is a “compound” Chartreuse flavor. Fenaroli’s Handbook suggests that the anise note should be more pronounced in the yellow form and subdued in the green.
Fernet Branca is a hangover cure and sometime ingredient of mixed drinks. It was devised by a Dr. Fernet, a Swede, as a tonic against cholera. The biting, medicinal taste gives no clue to its composition. The color is a murky sepia-black.
The label lists nine ingredients: aloes, gentian, zedoary, cinchona, calumba, rhubarb, angelica, chamomile, and saffron. This sounds like enough ingredients, but some authorities suspect there are others, not mentioned. For one thing, Fernet Branca smells like mint. None of the label ingredients smell much like mint, and it is questionable if their odors could combine to simulate mint. Fenaroli’s Handbook maintains that mint essential oil is an ingredient. Fenaroli’s further claims calamus, centaury, imperatoria, larch agaric (a mushroom growing around larch trees), St. Johnswort, and myrrh (as in the Bible, a hardened, pungent sap froman African tree) as ingredients of Fernet Branca or Fernet imitations. No citrus is used, says Fenaroli’s.
Priciest of Fernet’s ingredients is saffron. Better known for its color than flavor, saffron has a pungent, bitter taste. It sells for over a hundred dollars a pound. But according to a recipe in Merory’s Food Flavorings, a scant 50 grams of saffron suffice for a 100-liter batch of imitation Fernet. If this approximates the proportion of saffron in genuine Fernet Branca, the cost of saffron per bottle is on the order of ten cents.
Fernet’s inky color comes from a larger-than-usual dose of caramel coloring.
Grand Marnier is an orange liqueur, yet it tastes different from generic orange Curaçao-type liqueurs. Part of the reason is the cognac base. Cheaper brands use flavorless “neutral spirits.” The other difference is a secret list of background flavorings. According to a recipe in Food Flavorings, the principal secret ingredient is peppermint. Merory’s recipe for “Grand ‘M’-Type Flavor” uses more noncitrus than citrus flavorings:
Cointreau is believed to use many of the same ingredients but is prepared less sweet.