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Drink

Claret Cup

A chilled cocktail made with lemon juice, tea, claret, maraschino wine, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare

  1. Grate the rind of 2 lemons.

  2. Juice 8 lemons.

  3. Pour 2 quarts of boiling water over 8 teaspoons of tea and let it stand for 5 minutes.

  4. Strain the tea.

  5. Cool the strained tea.

Make the punch

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the lemon juice.

  2. Add the cooled tea to the lemon-sugar mixture.

  3. Stir in 1 quart of claret and ⅓ cup of maraschino wine.

  4. Garnish with cherries or sliced oranges.

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 + teatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Tea + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together333 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Wine + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon juice
Provides the acidity that balances the sugar and wine.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Tea
Adds tannins for a light bitterness and dryness to the drink.
Claret
Forms the wine base that gives the punch its body and main flavor.
Maraschino wine
Adds a sweet, almond-like cherry aroma to the blend.

The step that matters

Cool the tea before adding it. Hot tea added to the lemon-sugar mixture and wine can dull the delicate aromas of the claret and maraschino and make the drink taste harsher. Cooling it first keeps the blend fresh and balanced.

“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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