The main ingridient is lemon, exactly. Plus alcohol, water and sugar.
If you read any receipe of limoncello, you will find this description:
Put the peels of lemon in the bottle with alcohol 96% Left them for 7 days (other say 1 month)
Prepare sirup and add it to the filtered alcohol
Left it in a dark place for a month.
Nothing more. If you like mandarines or any other citruses, you can use them, too. If you bought lemons, mandarins, oranges... and don't want to through the peels, you can use them all to prepare flavoured alcohol.
Well, what can I say you more about it?
Ohhh! I can say you something new about it! Yes!
If you read my post How I Made Paper in a Medieval Workshop, you will remember that I was in Amalfi some days ago. Amalfi is the "capital" of limoncello. Why? Because the lemons that grow in the Amalfitan coast are different from all the other lemons for their very special flavour and taste.
I never believed it, you know. All the lemons are the same, I said. Till this visit of Amalfi.
I found an other interesting workshop there. The lemoncello workshop. And the man in that workshop wanted to explain me the preparation of limoncello.
I took the peel of the lemon he used for demonstration... It was something incredible. I bought lemons a day before and used peels and juice of it to cure ingestion. That is why I could notice the diufference immediatelly. It was completely different flavour. And I put the peel with me after the visit. The flavour persisted for some hours.
I did not know that there are MANY species of lemon tree. And one of them has not seeds in the fruit.
By the way, peels of lemon have to remain only 3 days in alcohol. First.
Limoncello costs much if it is 33-35%. It costs less if you ask 32% limoncello. Second.
Finally, if your limoncello has a "necklace" (formed by oils) -it's natural.
