Name: Sherry Cobbler
Ingredients: 3 glasses of sherry; 1 bottle of soda water; 1 tablespoon of pounded sugar; 1 glass of liqueur; ice

Why it works: Sherry and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,141 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Sherry Cobbler

Ingredients

Directions

In three tumblers, pour 1 glass of sherry and ⅓ glass of liqueur into each.
Add a lump of ice to each tumbler.
Divide the bottle of soda water among the three tumblers.
Serve with straws.

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.

Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,141 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sherry: Provides the wine base, with dry, nutty, oxidised flavour that gives the drink its body.
Liqueur: Adds sweetness and aromatic flavour that rounds out the dry sherry.
Soda water: Dilutes the wine and adds carbonation, giving the drink lightness and fizz.
Pounded sugar: Sweetens the drink and balances the dryness of the sherry.

“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.