Skip to main content
Drink

Gin Smash

A simple gin cocktail with sugar, mint, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and gin work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 344 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Gin Smash

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the sugar with a little water.

  2. Add the mint and dry gin.

  3. Stir well and serve in an old-fashioned cocktail glass.

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. Sugar + gintop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mint + gintop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together46 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + minttop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the gin.
Mint
Adds aroma and a fresh herbal flavour.
Dry gin
Provides the spirit base and its alcoholic strength.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, gin. 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

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes