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Claret Cup

A chilled claret cocktail with soda water, citrus, curacao, cucumber, sugar syrup, and mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Claret Cup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine claret and soda water in a large pitcher.

  2. Add the juice and slices of lemon and orange.

  3. Stir in the curacao and cucumber slice.

  4. Sweeten with sugar syrup to taste.

  5. Add a bunch of mint and serve well iced.

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

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

  3. Cucumber + minttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Orange + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Claret
Provides the wine base, giving the cup its body, colour and main flavour.
Soda water
Adds lightness and fizz, diluting the wine into a refreshing drink.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the drink and balances the sweetness.
Orange
Adds fruit juice and citrus aroma, rounding out the acidity.
Curacao
Adds orange-flavoured liqueur sweetness and aroma to the cup.
Sugar syrup
Adds sweetness, adjusted to taste to balance the acidity.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Arrowrootfits about as well
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

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