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Claret Cup

A chilled claret cocktail with cucumber, herbs, seltzer, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and borage share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 44 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Claret Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cup

  1. Cut the cucumber into thick slices and add to a large jug with the claret.

  2. Add the balm, borage, seltzer water, and sifted sugar or crushed sugar candy.

  3. Stir well and cover the jug, then place it on ice for 1 hour.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain out the herbs and cucumber, pour into a decanter, and serve.

  2. If you don't have time to ice the cup, break up ½ pound of clear ice into small pieces, stir into the claret, and use less seltzer water.

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. Cucumber + boragetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Borage + brandytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  4. Borage + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together129 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Cucumber + brandytop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Claret
Forms the wine base that carries the flavour of the whole cup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the wine and the sharpness of the cucumber.
Seltzer water
Adds dilution and light carbonation, making the cup lighter and more refreshing.
Cucumber
Adds fresh, mild aroma and a cool, clean flavour to the cup.

The step that matters

Chilling on ice for 1 hour. Cold slows the evaporation of aromatics and keeps the wine crisp, so the cucumber and herbs flavour the cup without it tasting warm or flat.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Arrowrootfits about as well
  2. Cucumberthe original
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Lettucefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against borage, sugar, brandy. 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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