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Mint Julep

A sweet, minty beverage made with syrup, juices, claret wine, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Mint Julep

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 1 quart of water with 2 cups of sugar for 20 minutes to make syrup.

  2. Separate the mint into pieces and add the mint pieces to the boiling water.

  3. Cover and let stand in a warm place for 5 minutes.

  4. Strain the mint infusion and add it to the syrup.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix in the strawberry juice, orange juice, and lemon juice.

  2. Cool the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a punch bowl.

  4. Add the claret wine.

  5. Chill with a large piece of ice.

  6. Dilute with water as desired.

  7. Garnish with fresh mint leaves and whole strawberries.

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. Orange + lemontop 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. Strawberry + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together726 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  5. Strawberry + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together263 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the acidity of the citrus and wine.
Fresh mint
Infused into the hot water to give the punch its aromatic mint flavour.
Claret wine
Provides the wine base and body of the punch.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the sweetness.
Strawberry juice
Adds fruity flavour and colour to the punch.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding the claret wine. Adding wine to a hot mixture can drive off its volatile aromas and alcohol, dulling flavour. Cooling first keeps the wine's character intact before chilling with ice.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Strawberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine, orange, lemon, 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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