Name: Hock Cup
Ingredients: ¼ pound crushed ice; 2 slices lemon; juice of 2 lemons; ⅓ cup Chartreuse; ⅓ cup Curaçao; 2 tablespoons sugar; 1 quart bottle hock; 2 bottles soda water

Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Hock Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Place crushed ice and lemon slices in a punch bowl.
Add lemon juice, Chartreuse, Curaçao, and sugar, and mix thoroughly.
Pour in hock and soda water.
Stir gently and let stand for 1-2 minutes before serving.

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.

Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

Hock: Wine base that supplies the main body and volume of the punch.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the punch and balances the sweetness.
Sugar: Sweetens the punch and softens the sharpness of the lemon and liqueurs.
Chartreuse: Adds herbal aromatic depth to the punch.
Curaçao: Adds orange-citrus aroma and a touch of sweetness.

“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.