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Drink

Peppermint Water

A sweet peppermint syrup made by boiling sugar and water, then adding peppermint essence and a sugar lump.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Peppermint and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 112 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Peppermint Water

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the loaf sugar in water in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a gentle boil for 8 to 10 minutes.

Flavour and finish

  1. Drop the essence of peppermint onto the lump of sugar.

  2. Pour the boiling water and sugar mixture over the sugar lump.

  3. Stir gently, cover tightly, and let it cool completely.

  4. Strain through a double layer of flannel and store in a bottle.

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. Peppermint + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + pepperminttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,082 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

Loaf sugar
Dissolves into the water to sweeten the drink and give it body.
Essence of peppermint
Provides the main aroma and flavour of the drink.
Sugar lump
Absorbs the peppermint essence so its flavour is carried into the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Covering and cooling the mixture. Peppermint oils are volatile and can evaporate with heat and air. Covering the mixture tightly while it cools keeps the aroma trapped, so the finished water tastes of peppermint rather than weakly flavoured.

Swap the peppermint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Peppermintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, walnut. 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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