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Old-fashioned Whisky Cocktail

This whisky cocktail is an out-and-out classic of the 1960s that will make you feel like a sharp-suited Don Draper in no time.

By bbcfood · From Open Recipes · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cherry and whisky share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 74 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl pentanoate, which smells yeast, fruit. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 1
Prep30 min

Ingredients

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By bbcfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cherry + whiskytop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together74 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Orange + cherrytop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together689 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Cherry + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,301 recipes

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

  5. Orange + whiskytop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together187 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the cherry

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

  1. Blackberrybetter flavor fit
  2. Applebetter flavor fit
  3. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, whisky, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).