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Drink

Mint Spray

A chilled mint and lemon beverage with shaved ice and ginger ale.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,998 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mint Spray

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fill a large glass half full of shaved ice.

  2. Add the juice of one lemon and the fresh mint sprigs.

  3. Stir gently to combine and release the mint flavor without bruising the mint.

  4. Fill the glass with ginger ale.

  5. Top with a slice of lemon and serve with straws.

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. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mint + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the sweet ginger ale.
Fresh mint
Provides the aroma that defines the drink.
Ginger ale
Adds sweetness and carbonation for a fizzy body.
Shaved ice
Keeps the drink cold and dilutes it slowly as it melts.

The step that matters

Stirring the mint gently. Bruising mint tears its leaves and releases bitter, grassy compounds, so a gentle stir gives fresh aroma without harshness. Stirring hard also knocks out the carbonation from the ginger ale.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, mint):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Corianderfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, mint. 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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