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Drink

Currant Water

A chilled beverage made with water, sugar, tart currant jelly, lemon and orange juice, served over ice and garnished with orange slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Currant Water

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a pot, combine 1 quart of water and ½ cup of sugar.

  2. Add 2 cups of tart currant jelly and boil until dissolved.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the juice of 3 lemons and 3 oranges.

  2. Serve over chopped ice and garnish with a slice of orange on top.

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. Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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 drink to balance the tart lemon and currant flavors.
Tart currant jelly
Provides the main fruit flavor and tartness as it dissolves into the liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that sharpens the sweetness and fruit flavor.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and citrus aroma to the drink.

The step that matters

Boil until the currant jelly fully dissolves. Jelly that is not fully dissolved leaves lumps and uneven sweetness and flavor. Heating helps the gel break down into the water so the drink is smooth and evenly tart.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, orange. 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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