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Drink

Mock Arrack

A drink made with rum, ale, eggs, sugar, ginger, nutmeg, lemon peel, and Benjamin flowers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mock Arrack

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavourings

  1. Dissolve the flowers of Benjamin in the Rum to impart fragrance.

  2. In a mortar, combine grated Ginger, Nutmeg, and dried Lemon-Peel.

Make the mixture

  1. Warm the Ale in a pot.

  2. Beat the Eggs with the Sugar and grated Nutmeg or Ginger in a bowl.

  3. When the Ale is near boiling, pour it into one pitcher and the Rum and Egg mixture into another.

  4. Pour the contents back and forth between the pitchers until smooth.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Rum + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together646 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Rum + gingertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Rum
Carries the flavour of the flowers of Benjamin and adds alcoholic warmth to the drink.
Eggs
Beaten into the drink to add body and a smooth, rich texture.
Ale
Forms the liquid base of the drink and is heated before blending.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the spices and the bitterness of the ale.
Ginger
Contributes a warm, pungent aroma and spice to the drink.

The step that matters

Pour the contents back and forth between the pitchers until smooth. Pouring the hot ale into the egg mixture can curdle the eggs if done too quickly or without mixing. Transferring the liquids back and forth aerates and blends them gradually, keeping the mixture smooth.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rum, nutmeg, lemon, egg, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rum, nutmeg, lemon, egg, 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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