Skip to main content
Drink

May Drink

A sparkling water drink sweetened with sugar, black currant essence, almond liqueur, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Black currant and almond share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

May Drink

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Slice the lemon and place in a bowl.

  2. Add the sugar, black currant essence, and noyeau to the bowl.

  3. Pour over the Apollinaris.

  4. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  5. Serve immediately.

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. Black currant + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together15 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Black currant + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

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

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

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

Sugar
Sweetens the drink and dissolves into the sparkling water.
Apollinaris sparkling water
Provides the carbonation and base liquid for the drink.
Noyeau
Adds a almond-like aroma and flavour to the drink.
Lemon
Adds acidity and fresh citrus aroma.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, black currant, almond):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Red currantfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, black currant, almond. 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.

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesAlmond MilkAlmond Milk18 recipesBlack Currant CordialBlack Currant Cordial11 recipes