The (half) Truth Shall Make Ye Fret!

And so, my darling larvae, we return once more to contemplating the true nature of clove cigarettes, which go also by the kenning of 'kreteks.' What I am to impart to you is both boon and burden. For, if you will allow me to take a quick detour into philosophical fancy, isn't all knowledge a boon, really? And are we not all as sentient beings burdened by our consciences, also, to be ever vigilant and responsible with its wielding?

Alright, I'm through fucking with you now, let's get down to Serious Business.

A few weeks ago, Avid Reader Dave posted some very interesting information on a subject I have been curious about for a long time. Namely, Djarum's mysterious kretek flavouring sauce. A certain Malachi de Aelfweald, quite an interesting and entertaining blogger, has posted on his own site the Djarum company's own internet-published recipe for the sauce:

Djarum Kretek recipe

Casing Flavour compound:
(per 100 parts tobacco)
maple sweet: 0.2
chocolate: 0.2
licorice: 0.4
plum casing: 0.3
coffee: 0.35
dried nangka: 0.35
dried fruit: 0.15
total casing flavours: 1.95

the casing flavours are water-soluble and suspended in:
humectants: 0.7
invert sugar: 0.5
water: 5

Top Flavour Compound (Top Dressing):
Havana: 0.8
Manila: 0.4
Strawberry: 0.3
Pineapple: 0.35
Pisang ambon: 0.25
Clove enhancer: 0.25
Pruimen: 0.05
Aniseed oil: 0.3
Cassia extract: 0.3
Salak cider: 0.1
Vanilla: 0.2
Orange: 0.25
Total top flavours: 3.55

A top-secret sauce containing, among other things: 
cinnamon
jackfruit
banana
vanilla

Where he found it on Djarum's website is a mystery to me. I  went there to see for myself what else was written about their manufacturing process, and I could find nothing after several minutes of clicking around. Sir Malachi, you possess more patience than I am capable of. Or, a better intrinsic knowledge of the working of corporate websites. Your pick.

But back to the point. This seems, at first glance, to be quite helpful, but it's not. Thanks, Dave, for trying, and thanks to Malachi, but as far as rolling our own kreteks goes, this is almost completely useless.

Let's look at the categories in order. 'Casing Flavour Compounds.' What's the casing flavour refer to? The paper, or the tobacco? In that case, what the hell is the 'Top Flavour Compound (Top Dressing)? Then there's the 'top-secret sauce' of which only a few ingredients are listed. There could be a hundred others, for all we know.

Then, the numbers next to each ingredient are well-nigh meaningless without more information. The numbers are sort-of identified as referring to 'per 100 parts tobacco.' It seems to imply that for 100 grams (g) of tobacco, one would use, for example, 0.2 g. of maple sweet, with 0.2 g of chocolate, et cetera, et cetera.  But wait! This falls flat if the 'casing' or the 'top dressing' refer to the cigarette's paper, because then a whole hell of a lot of ambiguity is thrown into the mix. These arbitrary 'parts,' are they then mixed up in amounts proportionate to the amount of tobacco being rolled, or are they per cigarette paper? For that matter, how much tobacco per cigarette? How big or small are these cigarettes?

Now for the ingredients. Maple sweet? I assume they mean maple sugar, or a preparation of maple syrup, but really, it could be anything. Chocolate, licorice, yeah, sure. Powdered, boiled, stirred, not shaken? Plum casing. The casing of a plum? The skin? Coffee, sure, who doesn't love coffee, but brewed, or just ground up and crammed in there? Dried nangka I had to look up, and it's either jackfruit, the largest of all tree-bourne fruits, or some kind of curry. No clue. Dried fruit, but which kind(s)? Then, these are all mixed up and suspended in water, invert sugar and humectants. Water's easy, as is invert sugar (sucrose hydrolysed into glucose and fructose, two monosaccharides). Humectants are just moisturizing agents. Could mean anything, really. Hand-cream? Vegetable oil? You get it.  Havana and milana I can only assume are types of fruit, because I doubt Djarum would use a Cuban city and an Italian porn-star for ingredients. Pisang ambon is a Dutch liqeur, clove enhancer could mean either cloves or something that makes cloves taste better, pruimen is the dutch word for prunes, aniseed oil is oil made from the anis seed (quite tasty as tea -- the seeds, not the oil), Cassia is Chinese cinnamon, and salak is snake-fruit. Thene there's a whole shitload of secret ingredients.

All in all, good to know about, but useless to try to emulate. The recipe is fiddly, badly written and/or translated, and contains many ingredients that not even I, who lives in New York fuckin' City, can easily aquire. Not to mention the lack of directions, no hint as to how any of these things are prepared, or even where they're supposed to be applied, tobacco or paper?

So use this as a springboard for your imagination, and use it as a reference, but don't bother trying to follow these directions. You'll end up flossing with your bootlaces, and that's just gross.