Why it works: Rye and orange work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 75 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓
Alexander Cocktail
Ingredients
Directions
Make the cocktail
In a bar glass, combine the rye whiskey and Benedictine.
Add a piece of ice and stir well.
Garnish and serve
Garnish with a twist of orange peel and serve.
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.
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Rye + orangetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together75 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
- Rye whiskey
- Provides the spirit base and its spicy, dry backbone.
- Benedictine
- Adds sweetness and herbal, aromatic complexity to balance the whiskey.
The step that matters
Stir well with the ice. Stirring chills the drink and adds a controlled amount of water from the melting ice. Too little stirring leaves the cocktail warm and harsh, while stirring too long over-dilutes it and dulls the flavour.
“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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