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Drink

Hock Cup

A chilled cocktail made with hock, brandy, Curaçao or Benedictine, seltzer, lemon peel, and a little borage.

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

Hock Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chill the hock and seltzer in a deep vessel surrounded by ice for 1 hour.

Make and serve

  1. In a glass jug, combine the hock, brandy, Curaçao or Benedictine, and lemon peel.

  2. Add the chilled seltzer or soda water and serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Brandy + lemontop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Hock
Forms the wine base of the cup, supplying most of its body and flavor.
Old brandy
Adds spirit strength and warming aroma that carries through the chilled drink.
Curaçao or benedictine
Adds sweetness and aromatic citrus or herbal notes to balance the wine.
Seltzer or soda water
Adds carbonation, lightness and dilution when added at the end.

The step that matters

Add the seltzer just before serving. Carbonation escapes quickly from warm or agitated liquid, so adding seltzer late and chilled keeps the cup lively and prevents it going flat and overly diluted.

“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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