Why it works: Mint and wine work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 442 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓
Mint Julep
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Strip the tender leaves of mint into a tumbler.
Add your desired amount of wine, brandy, or other spirit.
Mix and chill
Put pounded ice into a second tumbler.
Pour the mixture from the first tumbler onto the ice in the second tumbler.
Continue pouring the mixture back and forth until it is well infused with mint flavor.
Place the glass in a larger glass filled with pounded ice.
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.
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Mint + winetop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together442 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Tender leaves of mint
- Its aromatic oils supply the fresh mint aroma and flavor that infuse the drink.
- Wine, brandy, or any other spirit
- Acts as the solvent that draws mint flavor out of the leaves and adds its own warmth.
- Pounded ice
- Chills the drink and slowly dilutes it as it is poured and stirred.
The step that matters
Pouring the mixture back and forth until well infused. Mint flavor is extracted gradually as the spirit contacts the leaves and their oils. Stopping early leaves the drink weakly flavored, while the constant pouring also chills and mixes the liquid evenly.
“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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