Skip to main content
Drink

Ginger-mint Drink

A citrus and mint beverage mixed with ginger ale.

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

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 ↓

Ginger-mint Drink

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Juice the oranges and lemons into a bowl.

  2. Add the sugar and mint sprigs, then let it soak for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. In a small lemonade glass, add 1 tablespoon or more of the mixture.

  2. Fill the glass with cold ginger ale, stir well, and 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  3. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  5. Mint + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Adds juice, sweetness and a mild citrus flavor to the base.
Lemons
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the sourness of the citrus juice.
Mint
Adds a fresh aroma and cooling flavor as it soaks in the juice.
Ginger ale
Adds carbonation and fizz, lightening the drink and adding ginger flavor.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, sugar, ginger. 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

Orange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesOrange Water IceOrange Water Ice28 recipes