Name: A Cool Cup
Ingredients: 6 ounces sugar; 1 large fresh lemon; 1½ lemons (juice); 1 bottle good cider; ⅓ cup Sherry; ½ small nutmeg (grated); fresh balm or borage (optional)

Why it works: Lemon and borage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 102 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

A Cool Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the drink

Weigh 6 ounces of sugar and rub the rind of 1 large lemon on it to extract essence.
Put the sugar in a deep jug and add the strained juice of 1½ lemons.
Dissolve the sugar, then pour in a bottle of good cider and ⅓ cup of Sherry.
Add ½ small grated nutmeg and stir well.

Serve

Serve with or without fresh balm or borage sprigs.
For a cooler drink, cover and place on ice for a short time.

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.

Lemon + boragetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together102 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Nutmeg + boragetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together76 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Cider + sherrytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together143 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).
Sherry + boragetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar: Sweetens the drink and, rubbed with lemon rind, draws out the lemon oils for aroma.
Lemon: Adds acidity and bright flavour, with the rind supplying fragrant oils.
Cider: Forms the main liquid base and provides fruity flavour and light acidity.
Sherry: Adds depth and a dry, wine-like richness to the cider base.
Nutmeg: Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour.

Swap the borage

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

Cinnamonfits better
Allspicefits about as well
Thymefits about as well
Boragethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, cider, sherry, nutmeg. 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.