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Cider Cup

A chilled cider-based cocktail with brandy, lemon, cucumber, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and brandy work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Cider Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine the lemon rind, half the lemon juice, cucumber slices, and powdered sugar in a jug.

  2. Pour in the brandy and then the cider.

  3. Set the jug in ice.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the lemon peel and cucumber.

  2. Add the seltzer and pour into a glass jug.

  3. Garnish with a few sprigs of borage if available.

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

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

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

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

  3. Cider + cucumbertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together572 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

  5. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 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

Cider
Forms the main liquid base, providing most of the drink's apple flavour and volume.
Brandy
Adds alcoholic strength and warming, aromatic depth to the punch.
Seltzer
Adds carbonation, giving the cup a light, lively fizz.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the cold liquid to add sweetness that balances the lemon.
Lemon
Provides acidity and aromatic oils from the rind that brighten the cup.

The step that matters

Adding the seltzer. Carbonation is lost quickly when liquid is stirred or poured repeatedly. Adding the seltzer last, just before serving, keeps the cup fizzy and prevents it from going flat.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, brandy, lemon, 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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