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Drink

Pomegranate Water

A chilled beverage made from pomegranate seeds, sugar, lemon juice, water, cochineal, and optional elder flower essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pomegranate and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 225 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Pomegranate Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the seeds from the pomegranates.

  2. Bruise the seeds with the back of a wooden spoon.

Make the drink

  1. Mix in the sugar, lemon juice, water, cochineal, and elder flower essence if using.

  2. Filter the mixture until clear.

  3. Serve chilled.

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. Pomegranate + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Pomegranate + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and lemon 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

Pomegranates
Provide the main juice and the fruity flavour of the drink.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

Swap the pomegranate

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Pomegranatethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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