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Drink

Gin Sling

A chilled gin cocktail with sugar, water, ice, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Gin Sling

Why it works: Sugar and gin work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 344 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Gin Sling

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put the sugar into a glass.

  2. Stir in the water until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Add the gin.

  4. Add a lump of ice.

  5. Grate a little nutmeg on top and serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + gintop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

  3. Gin + nutmegtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together31 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Crushed loaf sugar
Dissolves in the water to give the drink its sweetness.
Gin
Provides the spirit base and the main flavour of the drink.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Clovefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, gin. 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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