Name: Essence of Peppermint
Ingredients: 4 ounces peppermint oil; 2 pints spirits of wine

Why it works: Spirit and wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 701 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Essence of Peppermint

Ingredients

4 ounces peppermint oil
2 pints spirits of wine

Directions

Mix the peppermint oil and spirits of wine together well.
Keep this mixture ready for making peppermint cordial.

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.

Spirit + winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together701 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Peppermint + winetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together369 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Peppermint + spirittop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together57 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Peppermint oil: Provides the main minty aroma and flavour of the cordial.
Spirits of wine: Carries the peppermint oil and keeps it evenly dispersed in the liquid.