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Claret Cup

A chilled cocktail made with claret wine, sparkling water, brandy, citrus, cucumber peel, powdered sugar, maraschino cherries, and mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 Cup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the claret, Apollonaris, brandy, and juice of the lemons in a large pitcher.

  2. Slice the oranges and add them to the pitcher.

  3. Add the cucumber peel and powdered sugar, then mix well.

  4. Add the Maraschino cherries and place a bunch of mint on the edge of the pitcher.

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. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + minttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Orange + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Claret
Forms the wine base that gives the punch its body and main flavor.
Lemons
Their juice adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and rounds out the acidity of the lemon juice.
Apollonaris
Sparkling water that adds fizz and dilutes the wine.
Brandy
Adds spirit strength and warmth to the wine base.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, brandy, sugar, mint. 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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