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Admiral’s Cool Cup

A chilled cider and Madeira cocktail with citrus, pineapple, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Admiral’s Cool Cup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rasp the sugar on the orange and lemon to remove the outer rind.

  2. Add the strained juice, pineapple in shreds, and the rest of the ingredients.

  3. Cover closely and chill in ice for 1 hour.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Cider + pineappletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cider
Provides the main liquid and a light, fruity apple flavour.
Madeira
Adds sweetness, depth and a rich, nutty aroma to the drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when rasped with the citrus, draws out aromatic oils from the rind.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the drink and balances the sweetness.
Orange
Adds citrus acidity and aromatic oils from its rind and juice.

The step that matters

Rasping the sugar on the citrus. Rubbing the rind into the sugar releases fragrant oils from the peel into the sugar, so the flavour is carried through the whole drink. Rasping too deeply into the white pith adds bitterness.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, orange, lemon, pineapple, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, orange, lemon, pineapple, 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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