Name: A Very Pleasant Drink
Ingredients: 1 cup cranberries; 1 quart water; 1 tablespoon oatmeal; ⅓ cup Lisbon wine; ⅓ cup sherry

Why it works: Wine and sherry work together. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

A Very Pleasant Drink

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Mash the cranberries in a bowl.
Boil 1 quart of water with 1 tablespoon of oatmeal.

Simmer and strain

Add the mashed cranberries and Lisbon wine to the boiling water.
Boil for half an hour.
Strain the mixture before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Wine + sherrytop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together0 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cranberries: Provide tart acidity, fruity flavor and color to the punch.
Lisbon wine: Adds wine flavor and aroma, and some sweetness and body to the punch.
Oatmeal: Its starch adds a little body and softness to the liquid.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.