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Mint Cordial

A mint cordial made with mint leaves, citrus rinds, juice, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Mint Cordial

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the mint leaves in the fruit juice for 30 minutes.

Make the syrup

  1. Bring the water and sugar to a boil, then add the grated rind and boil for 5 minutes without stirring.

  2. Remove from heat, add the fruit juice and mint, and strain carefully.

  3. Chill the mixture.

  4. If the color is not a delicate green, add a very small amount of green coloring with care.

Serve

  1. To serve, fill tiny glasses with shaved ice and pour in the cordial.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Spearmint + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Spearmint + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Sugar
Sweetens the cordial and, with the water, forms a syrup that carries the flavours.
Spearmint leaves
Provide the mint aroma that flavours the cordial.
Lemon and orange juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour that balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup without stirring. Stirring while the sugar syrup boils can encourage crystals to form and make the syrup grainy. Boiling it undisturbed keeps it smooth and clear.

Swap the spearmint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Spearmintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, 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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