Name: Compound Cranberry Water
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons oatmeal; 1 quart water; 1 slice lemon peel; a few dozen cranberries; cold water (to thin); sweetener (to taste); optional: ⅓ cup white wine or 2 tablespoons brandy

Compound Cranberry Water

A beverage made by boiling oatmeal with lemon peel, adding mashed cranberries, and sweetening, optionally with wine or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription

From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients

Why it works: Lemon and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Compound Cranberry Water

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the oatmeal in 1 quart of water with the lemon peel until smooth.
Mash the cranberries in a small quantity of cold water.
Add the cranberry mixture to the oatmeal gruel, ensuring it is very thin.
Sweeten to taste.
If desired, stir in white wine or brandy.

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.

Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,832 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal: Thickens the water into a smooth, light gruel that gives the drink body.
Cranberries: Provide tart fruit flavor and color to the drink.

“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.