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Ginger Ale Julep

A drink made with ginger ale, lemon juice, sugar, mint, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and mint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,998 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger Ale Julep

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Put the sugar in a glass pitcher.

  2. Squeeze the juice of the lemons over the sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Bruise the lower leaves of the mint and add to the pitcher.

Serve

  1. Add the pounded ice and pour in the ginger ale.

  2. Stir gently and serve immediately.

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 + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mint + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Granulated sugar
Dissolves in the lemon juice to sweeten the drink and balance its acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the drink and balances the sweetness of the sugar and ginger ale.
Mint
Bruising the leaves releases their aromatic oils, adding fragrance to the drink.
Ginger ale
Provides the carbonation and ginger flavor that form the base of the drink.

The step that matters

Stir gently and serve immediately. Ginger ale is carbonated, and its bubbles escape quickly when stirred vigorously or left standing. Gentle stirring keeps the drink lively, and serving right away preserves the fizz.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Mintthe original

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