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The Celebrated Collins Drink

A whiskey-based Collins cocktail with syrup, lemon juice, lemonade, and citrus essences.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

The Celebrated Collins Drink

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine whiskey, syrup, and lemon juice in a small bar glass.

  2. Half fill the glass with ice and shake vigorously to mix and chill the ingredients.

  3. Strain the mixture into a large bar glass.

  4. Flavor with Curacao or almond and orange essence.

  5. Pour in the lemonade and enjoy while it's lively.

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. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Syrup + almondtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together746 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Whiskey
Provides the spirit base and the main warming flavor of the drink.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup and lemonade.
Syrup
Adds sweetness to offset the sourness of the lemon juice.
Lemonade
Dilutes the drink and adds further sweet citrus flavor and lightness.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

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