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Drink

An Admirable Cool Cup

A chilled beverage made with sugar, lemon juice, cider, sherry, nutmeg, and optional fresh balm or borage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and borage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 102 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

An Admirable Cool Cup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Weigh the sugar and rub the lemon rind on it to extract its essence.

  2. Put the sugar into a deep jug and add the strained lemon juice.

  3. Once the sugar is dissolved, pour in the cider and sherry.

  4. Add the grated nutmeg and serve with or without fresh balm or borage.

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. Lemon + boragetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together102 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Nutmeg + boragetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together76 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cider + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  5. Sherry + boragetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the drink and, once dissolved, balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that cut through the sweetness of the sugar and cider.
Cider
Forms the base of the drink and supplies most of its liquid and fruity flavour.
Sherry
Adds body and a dry, fortified wine flavour to the cup.
Nutmeg
Contributes warm, aromatic spice to the finished drink.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar before adding liquid. Sugar dissolves far more readily in lemon juice and a warm or stirred mixture than when left sitting in cold liquid. Adding cider and sherry too early can leave grainy lumps and an uneven sweetness throughout the cup.

Swap the borage

The recipe marks borage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, cider, sherry, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Boragethe original

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