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Ginger Ale Frappe

A chilled beverage made with ginger ale, fruit, spices, and blackberry juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ginger Ale Frappe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the skin from the lemons into odd little spiral twists.

  2. Add a pinch each of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and whole cloves.

  3. Mix in 1 cup of granulated sugar, 1 cup of flaked pineapple, and 2 sliced oranges.

  4. Allow the fruit mixture to stand in a cold place for at least 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a large pitcher and slowly pour in 3 pints of ginger ale and ⅓ cup of blackberry juice.

  2. Serve immediately in small chilled mugs.

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.

  1. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw juice out of the fruit as it stands.
Ginger ale
Provides the fizz and sweet ginger flavour that forms the drink's base.
Lemons
Supply acidity and aromatic oils from the peel for a bright flavour.
Blackberry juice
Adds fruity colour and tart-sweet flavour to the drink.

The step that matters

Standing the fruit in the cold. Sugar draws liquid out of the fruit and pulls its flavour into the syrup over time. Standing it cold for the full three hours lets this extraction happen gradually, while keeping the fruit from fermenting or softening too quickly.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, clove, sugar, orange):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, clove, sugar, orange. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

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