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, an American Receipt
Ingredients
Directions
Strip the tender leaves of mint into a tumbler.
Add your desired amount of wine, brandy, or spirit to the tumbler.
In a second tumbler, place some pounded ice.
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.
Remove the glass from the ice; it will be covered with frost.
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.
-
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
- Release aromatic oils that flavour the spirit as it is poured back and forth.
- Wine, brandy, or other spirit
- Provides the alcoholic base that carries the mint flavour and aroma.
- Pounded ice
- Chills the drink and dilutes it slightly as it is poured over and surrounds the glass.
The step that matters
Continue pouring the mixture back and forth until well infused with mint flavor. Pouring chills the spirit and bruises the mint, drawing its aromatic oils into the liquid. Stopping too early leaves the mint flavour weak, while over-pouring can add excess dilution from the melting ice.
“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.
More mint julep recipes
You might also like
Wine Whey111 recipes
Raisin Wine64 recipes
Egg Wine58 recipes
Elderberry Wine51 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.