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Drink

Gin Fix

A sparkling gin cocktail with sugar, lemon juice, seltzer water, ice, and garnished with seasonal fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Gin Fix

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a glass, combine 2 teaspoons of sugar and the juice of 1 lemon.

  2. Add a squirt of seltzer and fill the glass with ice.

  3. Pour in the dry gin and stir well.

  4. Garnish with seasonal fruits and serve.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + gintop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together306 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 sharp lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity that brightens the drink and balances the sweetness.
Dry gin
Supplies the spirit base and its botanical aroma.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Orangefits about as well

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.

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