Skip to main content
Drink

Cider Cup

A chilled cider and brandy cocktail flavored with lemon and powdered sugar, finished with seltzer and served with borage sprigs.

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

Why it works: Lemon and borage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 102 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Cider Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Put the sugar in a jug with the lemon rind and half the juice.

  2. Pour over the brandy and set on ice.

Finish

  1. Once flavored, remove from ice and add the seltzer.

  2. Pour everything into a glass jug with a few sprigs of 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. Lemon + boragetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together102 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Cider + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Cider + boragetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together36 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Brandy + boragetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

Cider
Forms the liquid base and supplies the main apple flavor and body.
Brandy
Adds alcohol and aroma, and its flavor infuses into the cold cider.
Seltzer
Adds carbonation, giving the drink its fizz and a lighter texture.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma from the rind and juice, balancing the sweetness.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves quickly, even in cold liquid.

The step that matters

Add the seltzer after chilling. Carbon dioxide escapes more readily from warm liquid, so adding seltzer only once the mixture is cold and flavored keeps the drink fizzy rather than flat.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, brandy, sugar, borage):

  1. Pineapplefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, brandy, sugar, borage. 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.

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesApple CiderApple Cider11 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipes