Name: Cranberry Drink
Ingredients: 1 teacup cranberries; 1 teacup water; 2 quarts water; 1 large tablespoon oatmeal; a bit of lemon peel; sugar to taste

Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cranberry Drink

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Mash the cranberries with the water in a bowl.

Make the drink

In a pot, boil the two quarts of water with the oatmeal and lemon peel.
Add the mashed cranberries and sugar to the boiling mixture.
Boil for half an hour, then strain the drink.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

Cranberries: Provide tart flavor and color, and their pulp gives the drink body.
Oatmeal: Adds body and a soft, slightly thickened texture to the liquid.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the cranberries.

“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.