It’s a easy ingredient with a elaborate title: oleo saccharum. That means “sugar oil” in Latin, oleo saccharum is the results of putting citrus peels in sugar to tug out their important oils. The method produces a flavored sugar or syrup to make use of in cocktails.
Method again within the 1600s, 1700s, and 1800s, oleo saccharum was thought-about a vital ingredient in punch. The current rediscovery and renaissance of oleo may be credited to David Wondrich in his guide “Punch.” Within the guide, Wondrich writes in regards to the historical past of oleo and consists of many recipes just like the Endeavor Punch that requires lemon oleo saccharum together with rum, Madeira, and citrus juices.
As Victorian-era punch fell out of style in favor of single-sized servings of cocktails like slings and juleps, oleo additionally fell by the wayside. Now it’s again, and you may consider oleo as an old-timey ingredient or as a wise new-to-you method that can be utilized with an eye fixed towards sustainability: Extra on that in a second.
Within the early days of punch, sugar got here in arduous clumps or loaves that bartenders needed to break up and infrequently make clear themselves. In keeping with Wondrich’s oleo saccharum entry in “The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails,” in olden days drink makers would rub the surface of citrus fruits on the arduous sugar loaves. This carried out double responsibility of extracting the citrus oils and liquifying a number of the sugar. Today there’s no want for that.
Making Oleo Saccharum
Merely peel a citrus fruit and canopy the peels with sugar in a bowl or different container. Inside just a few hours the sugar will pull the oils out of the peels and the sugar will flip to liquid. For those who use a small quantity of sugar you’ll have a concentrated oily syrup (be at liberty to dilute it after). For those who use a variety of sugar relative to the amount of peels, you’ll get a flavored sugar. Most bartenders depart the peels within the sugar in a single day in a sealed container or in a vacuum bag, similar to is used for sous vide cooking. You’ll be able to even use a resealable bag like a Ziplock. (In a pinch, a quicker approach of constructing oleo is to easily muddle citrus peels with sugar, however it’s extra enjoyable to let it occur naturally.)
For those who’re not utilizing the ready oleo saccharum for just a few days, pressure or pull out the citrus peels, wiping off the liquid oils clinging to them again into the sugar, and retailer the peels individually. You may get one other use out of the citrus peels by candying them, which we’ll get into under.
Use Oleo Saccharum
Oranges, grapefruits, lemons, and to a lesser extent limes (more durable to peel; may be bitter) may be changed into oleo saccharum. The best approach to make use of the oleo is as you’ll use an unflavored sugar, or as a easy syrup by including an equal quantity of water to the oleo. Use lemon oleo in a turbo-charged lemonade, orange oleo in your Previous Normal, or lime oleo in a scrumptious Ti’ Punch. Or use oleo so as to add a brand new taste to an ordinary cocktail, like a grapefruit-tinged Daiquiri or an orange Whiskey Bitter.
Oleo Saccharum and Sustainability
In case your drink recipe requires citrus juice and/or a single peel as a garnish, you possibly can simply make use of the remainder of the fruit which may go to waste. Peel the citrus first, then toss the peels you don’t want with sugar to make oleo saccharum.
{Many professional} bartenders use the oleo saccharum method to get extra life out of partially-used citrus, similar to lemon slices or peels that had been reduce for garnishes however not utilized by the tip of the night time on the bar. They merely muddle or in any other case beat up these items of citrus with sugar and depart them in a container in a single day for the particular person on the morning shift to filter. Be aware that citrus peels should be peeled, scraped, poked, or in any other case crushed up a bit in order that the oils may be pulled out into the sugar. Utilizing still-unpeeled citrus sadly doesn’t work. (An instance of a recipe with “citrus scrap syrup” is the Golden Torch, a tequila drink from New York’s Cote, by which the bartenders macerate leftover lemon and orange peels with sugar.)
After making your flavored sugar or syrup oleo, you’re left with flabby, moist, sticky citrus peels that may now not spray oils atop cocktails in garnishes, however fortunately there’s a technique to make additional use of them. Merely place them in a meals dehydrator or within the oven on a cooking sheet set on the lowest temperature. After a number of hours or in a single day, the result’s dry, crispy, candied citrus peels that you may munch on or use as garnishes. And higher but, now they’re preserved as sweet, so you possibly can retailer them in an hermetic container and use them when wanted sooner or later.
General, because of this if you happen to plan it proper, you should use a single piece of citrus fruit for its recent juice, to make flavored sugar/syrup oleo saccharum, and as an edible peel garnish. Not dangerous for a method from the 1600s.
