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Cranberry Mint Cocktail

Simple, festive and very refreshing!

By tastykitchen · From Open Recipes · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cranberry and gin work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and 10 recipes mention both. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 4
Prep10 min

Ingredients

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Place the mint sprig in the bottom of a cocktail shaker and gently press it with a muddler or spoon to bruise the leaves.

  2. Add the cranberry sauce, lemon juice, gin and simple syrup to the shaker.

  3. Fill the shaker with ice, cover it, and shake hard for about 15 seconds until very cold.

  4. Strain the mixture evenly into four chilled glasses filled with fresh ice.

  5. Slowly top each glass with champagne or sparkling wine, leaving a little room at the top.

  6. Garnish each glass with a lemon slice, a few fresh cranberries and a small sprig from the fresh mint bunch.

  7. Serve immediately while the sparkling wine is still lively.

By tastykitchen. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cranberry + gintop 16% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Lemon + minttop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,998 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + syruptop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Gin + syruptop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + champagnetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together358 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cranberry, sauce, gin, syrup, mint, champagne):

  1. Raspberrybetter flavor fit
  2. Pineappleabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Strawberryabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cranberry, sauce, gin, syrup, mint, champagne. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).