Name: Porter Sangaree
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon water; 1 heaping teaspoon sugar; freshly opened porter; nutmeg (for grating)

Why it works: Sugar and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 23,364 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Porter Sangaree

Ingredients

1 tablespoon water
1 heaping teaspoon sugar
freshly opened porter
nutmeg (for grating)

Directions

Dissolve the sugar in the water in a tumbler.
Fill the tumbler with freshly opened porter.
Grate a little nutmeg on top and enjoy.

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.

Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the bitterness of the porter.
Porter: Forms the base of the drink and supplies its malty, roasted flavour.
Nutmeg: Adds a warm, aromatic spice on the surface of the drink.

“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.