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Mint Frappe

A chilled mint beverage made with mint pulp, lemon juice, sugar syrup, and peppermint extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and peppermint match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,583 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Mint Frappe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup base

  1. Pound the mint leaves to a pulp.

  2. Add the strained juice of the lemons.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 30 minutes.

  4. Boil the water and sugar together for 5 minutes.

  5. Pour the syrup over the mint mixture.

  6. Let the mixture cool.

  7. Strain the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Add green food coloring.

  2. Add peppermint extract.

  3. Freeze until it reaches a mushy consistency.

  4. Serve in tall glasses with a sprig of mint in each glass.

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 + pepperminttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  3. Mint + pepperminttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together77 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + pepperminttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,082 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh mint leaves
Provides the main mint flavor, released by pounding the leaves into a pulp.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the mint and balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, once frozen, helps keep the frappe soft rather than rock-hard.

The step that matters

Freeze until mushy. Freezing forms ice crystals; stopping while the mixture is still slushy keeps it smooth and scoopable. Freezing solid makes it hard and icy.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Basilfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, peppermint. 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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