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Drink

May Drink

A chilled wine-based drink flavored with black currant leaves, woodruff, lemon rind, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and black currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

May Drink

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

  1. Combine black currant leaves, woodruff, lemon rind, and sugar in water.

  2. Steep until well-flavored.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour in the hock wine and stir.

  2. Strain into a glass jug, discarding the flavorings.

  3. Add fresh woodruff sprigs.

  4. Serve chilled with ice.

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 + black curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Wine + black curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

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

  5. Sugar + black curranttop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 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

Hock wine
Forms the base of the drink and supplies its main body and alcohol.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the wine's acidity.
Fresh woodruff
Provides the characteristic aroma of the drink.

Swap the black currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Black currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, lemon. 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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