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Drink

Cherry Cocktail

A chilled cocktail of chopped cherries and lemon juice served in hollowed lemons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cherry Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Cut a slice from the pointed end of each lemon to create a lid.

  2. Remove all juice and pulp from the inside of each lemon.

  3. Wash the lemon cups and lids.

Make the cherry filling

  1. Stone the cherries.

  2. Bruise the cherries.

  3. Chop the cherries finely.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to each cup of chopped cherries.

  5. Sweeten to taste.

  6. Strain the mixture thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Fill the lemon cups with the strained mixture.

  2. Serve with straws on a circle of cress.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe cherries
Provide the main fruit flavour and body of the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the cherries.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling to taste.

“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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