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Claret Cup

A chilled claret-based cocktail with soda water, citrus juices, curacao, cucumber, mint, and sugar syrup.

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

Make the punch

  1. In a large pitcher, combine the claret, soda water, lemon juice, orange juice, and curacao.

  2. Add the slice of cucumber and sweeten with sugar syrup to taste.

  3. Stir well and add a bunch of mint.

Serve

  1. Serve well iced.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Claret
Provides the wine base and most of the punch's body and flavour.
Curacao
Adds orange aroma and sweetness to the blend.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the wine.
Soda water
Adds carbonation, lightening the texture and making the drink refreshing.
Sugar syrup
Adds sweetness, balancing the acidity of the citrus and wine.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

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