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Drink

A Quick Drink

A chilled cocktail of sherry, cider, mint, and sugar served over pounded ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and cider work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 143 recipes. Both carry ethyl pentanoate, which smells yeast, fruit. The science ↓

A Quick Drink

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large tumbler, mix sherry, mint, and sugar. Add pounded ice.

  2. Pour in the cider and drink when it effervesces.

  3. For smaller servings, divide the ingredients into two glasses.

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 + cidertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  2. Mint + cidertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together115 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Sherry + minttop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together83 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + cidertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,308 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

Sherry
Provides the main wine base and a dry, nutty flavour.
Cider
Adds sparkle and fruity acidity that lightens the drink.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the sherry and cider acidity.
Mint
Adds a fresh, aromatic herbal note.

The step that matters

Pour in the cider and drink when it effervesces. Cider's carbonation is lost quickly once poured and sitting. Adding it last, just before serving, keeps the drink lively rather than flat.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, sugar, cider. 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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