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Drink

Cool Tankard or Mug

A chilled ale or porter mixed with lime, white wine, mint, and sweetener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and mint match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 846 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cool Tankard or Mug

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the juice of two limes, thinly cut lime peel, a glass of white wine, grated nutmeg, syrup, and a handful of fresh mint or borage leaves in a jug.

  2. Mix in one pint of water and let the mixture cool for 15 minutes.

  3. Pour in the bottle of cool ale or porter just 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. Lime + minttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together846 recipes

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

  2. Lime + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together236 recipes

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

  3. Mint + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

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

  4. White wine + minttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. White wine + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Ale or porter
Provides the beer base and malty body that gives the tankard its character.
White wine
Adds acidity and a light fruity note to the drink.
Limes
Contribute acidity and aromatic oils from the peel.

The step that matters

Pour in the ale or porter just before serving. Beer is best added at the last moment so it keeps its carbonation and fresh flavour; once mixed with the other liquids and left standing, it loses fizz and aroma.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, lime, syrup, mint):

  1. Corianderfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, lime, syrup, mint. 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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