Name: Mint Julep
Ingredients: 2 or 3 sprigs of mint; 4 tablespoons sherry or grape juice; seltzer; shaved ice

Why it works: Mint and sherry work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 83 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Mint Julep

Ingredients

2 or 3 sprigs of mint
4 tablespoons sherry or grape juice
seltzer
shaved ice

Directions

Fill a glass halfway with shaved ice.
Add 2 or 3 sprigs of mint and crush the mint leaves to a pulp using a muddler.
Pour in 4 tablespoons of sherry or grape juice.
Fill the glass with seltzer.
Shake, strain, and serve with fresh mint protruding from the glass.

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.

Mint + sherrytop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together83 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Mint: Crushed leaves release aromatic oils that give the drink its characteristic fresh flavour.
Sherry or grape juice: Adds sweetness and body, lightly flavouring the drink against the seltzer.

“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.