Skip to main content
Drink

Claret Cups

A chilled beverage made with claret, soda water, sugar, lemon, borage, and cucumber.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Borage and cucumber share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 44 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Claret Cups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cucumber and sprinkle the sugar over it.

  2. Pour in the claret and add the lemon rings.

Steep and serve

  1. Let it stand for an hour if possible.

  2. Just before serving, pour in the soda water and add the borage.

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. Borage + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + boragetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together102 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Sugar + boragetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together129 recipes

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

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

Claret
The wine base, supplying most of the body and flavour.
Sugar
Dissolves into the wine, sweetening it and softening its tartness.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and citrus aroma to the wine.
Cucumber
Adds a mild, fresh aroma as it steeps in the wine.
Soda water
Adds fizz and lightly dilutes the wine just before serving.

The step that matters

Adding the soda water. Carbonation escapes quickly from warm, stirred or long-standing liquid. Pouring the soda water in just before serving keeps the cup lively and fizzy.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesCucumber PicklesCucumber Pickles25 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipes