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Drink

Harvest Drink

A fermented vinegar and ginger punch made with lemon, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Harvest Drink

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine cream of tartar, lemon juice, and lemon rind in a stone jar.

  2. Pour 7 quarts of boiling water over the mixture, stir, and cover closely.

  3. Once cooled, sweeten to taste, strain, and bottle.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

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

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Cream of tartar
Adds a tart, acidic bite that gives the punch its sharp flavor.
Vinegar
Contributes sharp acidity that brightens the punch.
Lemon juice
Supplies acidity and fresh citrus tang.
Lemon rind
Its oils add aroma and citrus flavor without much extra acidity.
Sugar
Sweetness that balances the sourness of the acids.
Ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Apricotfits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, ginger, sugar, cream. 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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