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Drink

Claret Lemonade

A chilled beverage made with lemon juice, claret syrup, ice, and garnished with a cherry and orange slice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Claret Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the drink

  1. Fill a shaker with ice.

  2. Add the juice of 1 lemon and 2 oz of claret syrup, then shake well.

  3. Pour into a clean glass.

Garnish

  1. Garnish with 1 cherry and a thin slice of orange on top.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Cherry + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together689 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + cherrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Syrup + cherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together339 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the drink and balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Claret syrup
Provides sweetness, color, and wine-like flavor.
Ice
Chills the drink and dilutes it slightly as it melts.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, syrup, 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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