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Drink

Saloop

A beverage made by boiling water and white wine, adding saloop, sweetening, and garnishing with lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Saloop

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix water and white wine in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, stir together saloop and a little water until smooth.

  3. Combine the saloop mixture with the boiling wine and water, and boil for a few minutes.

  4. Sweeten to taste and grate in a little lemon peel.

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. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Saloop
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, creamy body once it is boiled.
White wine
Adds acidity and a fruity, aromatic flavour to the drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the wine.
Lemon peel
Adds bright citrus aroma to the finished drink.

The step that matters

Mixing the saloop into a smooth paste before adding it to the boiling liquid. Saloop is a starchy powder that clumps when dropped into hot liquid dry or unevenly. Stirring it smooth with a little cold water first lets the particles disperse, so the mixture thickens evenly during the few minutes of boiling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, sugar. 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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