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Drink

Excellent Negus

A chilled punch made with pearl barley, sugar, lemon, wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Excellent Negus

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour boiling water over pearl barley, sugar, and sliced lemon.

  2. Let it cool, then strain the mixture.

  3. Add wine and brandy to the strained liquid.

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. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Barley + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Pearl barley
Starch from the barley gives the punch a soft, slightly thickened body as it steeps.
Sugar
Sweetness that balances the acidity of the lemon and the alcohol.
Lemon
Acidity and aromatic oils from the peel brighten the drink.
Wine
Adds liquid volume, mild acidity and fruity flavour.
Brandy
Adds alcohol strength and a warm, aromatic character.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, sugar, wine, brandy. 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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