Name: Hypocras
Ingredients: 3 quarts good white wine; 1½ pounds loaf sugar; 1 ounce cinnamon; 2-3 tops sweet marjoram; a little long pepper; 1 grain musk; juice of 1 large lemon

Why it works: Marjoram and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 957 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hypocras

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

Infuse the wine with sugar, cinnamon, marjoram, and long pepper for a few hours.
Strain the mixture through a filtering bag, adding the musk and lemon juice.
Gently heat the mixture over the fire and pour it back over the spices.

Rest and bottle

Let it stand for 3-4 days, then strain again and bottle for use.

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.

Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together957 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + marjoramtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together93 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

White wine: Forms the liquid base that carries the sugar and spice flavours.
Loaf sugar: Adds sweetness and body to the wine.
Cinnamon: Contributes warm, aromatic flavour as the wine infuses.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, spiced wine.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, sugar, marjoram, pepper, lemon):

Thymefits better
Tarragonfits better
Parsleyfits better
Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, sugar, marjoram, pepper, lemon. 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.