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Drink

Mai Trank

A sweet wine-based May Day drink flavored with orange and woodruff.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and red wine share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 97 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Mai Trank

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wine

  1. Combine 1 pint of light white wine with 2 pints of red wine in a large deep jug.

  2. Dissolve enough sugar in the wine to sweeten it to your liking.

  3. Wipe the orange, cut it into thick slices without peeling, and add it to the wine.

  4. Add small bunches of woodruff to the jug.

Steep and serve

  1. Cover the jug tightly to exclude air and let it sit until the next day.

  2. Serve to May-day visitors.

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. White wine + red winetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together97 recipes

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

  2. White wine + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together730 recipes

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

  3. Red wine + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together288 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Light white wine
Lightens the blend and adds a fresh, mild fruitiness to the base.
Red wine
Supplies most of the body, colour and tannin in the drink.
Sugar
Sweetens the wine to the taste of the drinker.
China orange
Adds citrus aroma and a bright, slightly sharp flavour as it steeps.
Woodruff
Releases a sweet, hay-like aroma into the wine as it steeps.

The step that matters

Cover the jug tightly and let it sit overnight. Covering keeps air out so the wine does not oxidise and turn flat or vinegary, while the steeping lets the orange and woodruff aromas infuse evenly into the liquid.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, red wine, sugar):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, red wine, sugar. 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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