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Drink

Grapefruit Cocktail

A chilled grapefruit drink mixed with sugar, optional pineapple and cherries, served with crushed ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Grapefruit and pineapple work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 95 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Grapefruit Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the cells and juice from the grapefruit skin.

  2. Add sugar, chopped pineapple, and Maraschino cherries if desired.

  3. Serve very cold in thin glasses, surrounded by crushed ice or in fruit shells.

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. Grapefruit + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

  3. Grapefruit + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Grapefruit
Provides the juice and pulp that form the cocktail's base, with tart, bitter flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the grapefruit's sourness and bitterness.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar. Sugar dampens the perception of bitterness and sourness in grapefruit. Stir it in until dissolved and taste before serving, since the amount is to taste and too little leaves the juice sharp.

Swap the pineapple

The recipe marks pineapple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (grapefruit, sugar):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against grapefruit, sugar. 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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