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Drink

Claret Cup

A chilled drink made from claret, soda water, lemon, nutmeg, sugar, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Claret Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the lemon very thin and grate the nutmeg.

  2. In a jug, add the lemon peel, grated nutmeg, and 1 pound of loaf sugar.

  3. Pour 1 pint of boiling water over the mixture and let it cool.

Make the cup

  1. Once cool, strain the mixture and mix it with the wine and soda water.

  2. Combine 3 bottles of soda water with 1 bottle of claret in a bowl.

  3. Add a little lemon juice if desired.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

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

Claret
Forms the wine base that gives the cup its body and flavour.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cup and balances the wine's acidity.
Soda water
Adds carbonation, lightening the drink and giving it a lively fizz.
Lemon
Its peel supplies aromatic oils that flavour the cup.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nutmeg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, sugar. 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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