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California Sherry Cobbler

A chilled cocktail made with California sherry, pineapple syrup, sugar, bitters, and ice, garnished with fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and port wine match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 132 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

California Sherry Cobbler

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fill a large bar glass halfway with ice.

  2. Add sugar, pineapple syrup, California sherry, and bitters.

  3. Stir well.

  4. Fill the glass with more ice.

  5. Garnish with fruit.

  6. Add a dash of Port wine on top.

  7. Serve with a straw.

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. Sherry + port winetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + sherrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Pineapple + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Pineapple + syruptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

California sherry
Provides the wine base and its dry, nutty flavour that forms the drink's body.
Pineapple syrup
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour that balances the sherry's dryness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps round out the sherry and syrup.
Bitters
Adds aromatic depth and a subtle bitter note to balance the sweetness.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, syrup, sherry, port wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup, sherry, port wine. 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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