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Drink

Claret Cup

A chilled cocktail made with claret, brandy, lemon peel, water, sugar, borage, and cucumber.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Borage and cucumber share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 44 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Claret Cup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the claret, brandy, lemon peel, water, and sugar in a pitcher.

  2. Add the borage and cucumber slices.

  3. Chill well in the refrigerator or serve over ice.

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. Borage + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + boragetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together102 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Brandy + boragetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

Light claret
Forms the wine base, providing most of the drink's body and fruity flavor.
Brandy
Adds alcoholic strength and a warm, aromatic depth to the wine.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the wine's acidity and the lemon.
Lemon peel
Its oils add bright citrus aroma and a light tang.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Cucumberthe original
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, lemon, sugar, borage. 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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