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Drink

Strawberry Cocktail

A chilled beverage made from mashed strawberries, lemon and orange juice, sugar, and water, served with sliced strawberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Strawberry Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mash the strawberries in a bowl.

  2. Add the lemon juice, orange juice, sugar, and water.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 2 hours.

  4. Strain through a jelly bag.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill in the refrigerator until very cold.

  2. Serve in tall glasses with 3 sliced strawberries 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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Strawberries
Provides the main fruit flavour and colour of the drink.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and helps draw juice out of the mashed fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness.
Orange juice
Adds citrus flavour and a little extra sweetness.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture stand. Standing gives the sugar and acid time to draw juice and flavour out of the mashed strawberries. Skipping or shortening this step leaves the drink weak and less fruity.

“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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