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Wassail-bowl, Ok Cut

A sweet alcoholic beverage made with sugar, beer, sherry, nutmeg, ginger, and roasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Wassail-bowl, Ok Cut

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the sugar and warm beer. Add the grated nutmeg and ginger.

  2. Pour in the sherry and additional beer, then stir well. Sweeten to taste and cover; let it stand for 2-3 hours.

  3. Add the roasted bread slices before serving. For extra flavor, include lemon slices and sugar rubbed on lemon peel.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Beer + sherrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28 recipes

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

  5. Beer + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Lisbon sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the drink, balancing the sherry and beer.
Sherry
Contributes a rich, fortified wine flavor and aroma.
Beer
Forms the liquid base and adds malty flavor and light bitterness.
Roasted brown bread
Soaks up liquid and adds toasty, roasted flavor to the bowl.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor.

The step that matters

Sweeten to taste and let it stand. Sugar and spices need time to dissolve and blend into the liquid, so sweetness and aroma develop evenly. Tasting before resting makes it easier to judge sweetness, since flavors soften and mellow as the bowl stands.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, beer, nutmeg, ginger, sherry, bread):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, beer, nutmeg, ginger, sherry, bread. 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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