Name: L Claret Cup
Ingredients: 1 bottle of Claret; 1 pint bottle of German Seltzer water; small bunch of balm; small bunch of borage; 1 orange, sliced; ½ cucumber, sliced thick; ⅓ cup of Cognac; 1 ounce of bruised sugar-candy

Why it works: Borage and cucumber share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 44 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

L Claret Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cup

Combine all ingredients in a covered jug immersed in rough ice.
Stir with a silver spoon.

Chill and serve

Let the mixture chill for about 1 hour.
Strain or decant off the liquid, discarding the herbs.

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.

Borage + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together44 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Borage + orangetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together32 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Orange + cucumbertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together325 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Borage + sugartop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together129 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Claret: Forms the wine base, providing most of the body and flavour of the cup.
Cognac: Adds spirit strength and aromatic depth to the wine.
Sugar-candy: Adds sweetness that balances the wine's acidity and dryness.
German seltzer water: Dilutes the cup and adds light effervescence.
Orange: Contributes citrus acidity and fresh aroma.