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A Most Pleasant Drink

A warm drink made from cranberries, oatmeal, lemon peel, sugar, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,273 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

A Most Pleasant Drink

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Mash the cranberries in a cup of water.

Simmer the punch

  1. Boil 2 quarts of water with the oatmeal and lemon peel.

  2. Add the mashed cranberries and sugar, adjusting to taste.

  3. Stir in the sherry and boil for 30 minutes.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the mixture before serving.

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 + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Lemon and sugar 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

Cranberries
Provide the tart fruit flavor and the punch's red color.
Sherry
Adds a mellow wine flavor, sweetness and aroma.
Oatmeal
Adds body, giving the liquid a soft, slightly thickened texture.
Sugar
Sweetens and balances the tartness of the cranberries.
Lemon peel
Adds a bright citrus aroma to the punch.

The step that matters

Boiling the sherry. Boiling drives off alcohol and the delicate aromas of the sherry, so its flavor fades while the liquid reduces. Because the sherry is added before the final boil, taste the punch for sweetness and tartness before simmering, since reduction concentrates both.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry. 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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