curaçao (sometimes spelled curaçoa) , originally a liqueur flavored with the dried peels of the laraha orange, a particularly bitter offshoot of the Seville orange native to the Caribbean island of Curaçao, has become an umbrella term for orange liqueur in general. As such, it is one of the most important branches of the liqueur family, both historically and commercially.
According to the early nineteenth-century French culinary chronicler Alexandre Grimod de la Reynière, curaçao “originated in Flanders, which is to say Tournai, Brussels, Douai, etc.,” where proximity to Holland gave distillers easy access to the necessary peels (Curaçao was a Dutch colony at the time). And in fact, some of the earliest known mentions of it by name are found in newspaper advertisements from Ghent, in Flanders, from the mid-1790s. These advertisements present it without explanation, which implies that it must have been known for some time. (Of course, the fact that merchants in Curaçao were exporting dried orange peels strongly suggests that the idea of flavoring spirits with them was already known on that island, at least for local use.)
Spirits flavored with orange peel in general were nothing new: there are German recipes for orange- and lemon-peel-flavored “Pomeranzenwasser” from the late 1500s (although that had other highly aromatic ingredients as well). Nonetheless, such things were not in universal use: as one English distiller wrote in 1731, “Orange-water” was “not much known, or used in [this] country,” despite “the agreeable flavour, or relish thereof.”
By the first decade of the nineteenth century, however, curaçao had become fashionable in Paris, and that meant in London as well. It is possible that the French occupation of Curaçao from 1795 to 1800 and the British one from 1800 to 1816 during the Napoleonic Wars greatly assisted its dissemination. In any case, by 1820 curaçao was, along with maraschino di Zara and crème de noyaux, one of the canonical liqueurs, available everywhere and taken on all occasions. See maraschino and crème de noyaux. That popularity led to widespread imitation, and by the middle of the century very little of the curaçao sold had any connection with the island beyond sharing a name. As with any popular liqueur in an age before brands, there were as many versions as there were distillers and merchants, using a wide variety of orange and other citrus peels in their composition.
The earliest version, described by Grimod de la Reynière, was made by distilling the peels in unaged brandy and reducing and sweetening the resulting spirit; this would have been colorless. Almost contemporary, however, was the version treating it as a ratafia, where the peels were infused in brandy without redistillation; this would have been orange or green depending on the ripeness of the oranges peeled. See ratafia. By the middle of the century, the state-of-the-art technique involved combining the methods: the bitter-orange peels were distilled, along with some supporting spices (e.g., cinnamon, cloves, mace) in unaged brandy or neutral spirit, and the result was blended with a lesser quantity of an infusion of the peels of sweet, or Valencia, oranges, again in new brandy or spirit. In 1891, the well-regarded Paris liquoriste Louis-Alexandre Marnier elaborated on this in the curaçao he created for the exclusive Café Royal in London by replacing the neutral spirit in the infusion with aged cognac from that establishment’s cellars. This was widely imitated. See
By the end of the nineteenth century, curaçao was widely manufactured in Europe and America and marketed in a dizzying variety of styles and grades. It is difficult to categorize them, not least because, in the absence of regulations to hold manufacturers to their claims, there is no guarantee that what was in the bottle corresponded with what was on the label. Thus, for example, “double” curaçao, which ostensibly used twice as much flavoring matter as usual, generally did not, as one distiller noted in 1900, “in reality contain double the aromatics of ordinary curaçao.” Different printed recipes for the same designation rarely agree in detail regarding process, quantities, or types of aromatics, quantity of sugar, percentage of alcohol, or anything else.
While most of these styles are of historical interest only, one that remains in use, at least nominally, is the colorless “triple sec,” a French innovation of the 1850s, which began, as far as can be determined, as a higher-proof, more concentrated blend of three separate distillations of different kinds of orange peels in neutral spirit (it is sec, “dry,” not because there is less sugar in it but because there is more bitter-orange flavor and more alcohol). While the highest-quality brands still use some variation of this process, “triple sec” has become an essentially meaningless term, in that the great majority of the versions on the market are cheap, low-proof, thickly sweet compounds of neutral spirit and flavoring essences.
Another common style is blue curaçao, first introduced by the Dutch Lucas Bols firm in 1912 to supplement the existing red and green varieties, which were artificially colored to heighten the natural colors of the peels of the ripe or unripe oranges on which they were ostensibly based. This, too, is usually of poor quality. There are exceptions: the Senior company of Curaçao, the island’s only commercial producer since 1945, uses real laraha peels in their product. The two most prominent curaçao producers, however, long ago exempted themselves from the category, Curaçao Marnier becoming Grand Marnier in the 1890s and Curaçao Triple Sec Cointreau becoming simply Cointreau some thirty years later. “Curaçao” had become generic to the point it was detrimental to branding. See Grand Marnier and Cointreau.
Curaçao in its various forms is used in some of the most popular mixed drinks in circulation, including the Margarita, the Mai Tai, the Long Island Iced Tea, and a host of others. See Margarita; Mai Tai; and Long Island Iced Tea. Indeed, this has been one of its most important uses since it was first introduced: one of its main vectors to popularity was its use in punch, and in particular in some of the early versions of the punch that the British prince regent, a connoisseur of that beverage, habitually drank. See Regent’s Punch.
A good orange curaçao adds richness and subtle spice notes to a drink without making it overly orangey, while in a proper triple sec the orange will be more overt. Neither should be too sugary or syrupy on the one hand or hot and harsh on the other.
Annales du propriété industrielle. Paris: A. Rousseau, 1899.
Appers, Jan, advertisement. Gazette van Ghent, July 7, 1796, 6.
Arnou, Leon. Manuel du confiseur liquoriste. Paris: Baillière & fils, 1905.
Grimod de la Reyniere, Alexandre. Almanach des gourmands, sixième année. Paris: 1808.
Sebzius, Melchior. Siben Bücher von dem Feldbau. Strasburg: 1579.
Smith, G. Compleat Body of Distilling. London: 1731.
Victor, Sébastian. Guide pratique du fabricant d’alcools. Montpellier: Camille Coulet, 1900.
By: David Wondrich