⭐ The best-kept secret in cocktail sweeteners, and it needs no heat and almost no work.
Oleo saccharum is Latin for oil-sugar, and it is exactly that: citrus peel and sugar left together so that the sugar’s hygroscopy draws the essential oil straight out of the zest. What you pour off a few hours later is a thick, almost fluorescent orange syrup that smells like the inside of an orange grove.
It is the historical foundation of punch — it predates the cocktail entirely — and it makes an Old Fashioned that needs no orange garnish at all, because the orange is already dissolved in it.
The only skill involved is peeling without pith.
Ingredients
- Peel of 3–4 oranges, in wide strips, as little white pith as possible
- 1/2 cup sugar (white, or demerara for a deeper version)
Directions
- Peel the oranges in wide strips with a vegetable peeler or a sharp paring knife. You want the coloured outer layer — the flavedo — and as little of the white pith as you can manage. The pith has none of the oil and plenty of coarse bitterness.
- Toss the peel with the sugar in a jar or a bowl until every strip is coated.
- Seal it and leave it at room temperature for at least a few hours, ideally overnight. Give it a shake or a press whenever you walk past.
- The sugar will draw the oil out and then dissolve in it. You will end up with the peels sitting in a small amount of very intense orange syrup.
- Pour off the syrup. If some sugar is still undissolved, add a splash of hot water and stir, or muddle the peels gently against the side.
- Strain out the peel. Bottle and refrigerate.
Notes
Use it at rich-syrup volumes — roughly 1/4 oz in a 2 oz Old Fashioned — because it is concentrated and it is bringing flavour as well as sugar.
Lemon works the same way and is sharper and higher-pitched. A mix of orange and lemon peel is excellent.
Keeps about two weeks refrigerated. It is more delicate than a plain syrup because there is real citrus oil in it, and the top-end aroma is the first thing to go.
Do not waste the peeled oranges. Juice them, or eat them.
This technique reappears in clarified milk punch, which is where the punch tradition and the cocktail tradition meet.