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Dessert

Port Wine Drops

A sweet drop made from port wine, lemon rind, isinglass, cinnamon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Port Wine Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mixture

  1. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer slowly for 30 minutes.

  3. Allow to cool slightly.

Set and cut

  1. Pour onto a wetted plate.

  2. Once set, cut into small rounds.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Port wine + cinnamontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Port wine + lemontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Port wine
Forms the liquid base and gives the drops their main flavour.
Isinglass
Gelling agent that sets the cooled liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the drops and adds body to the finished jelly.
Lemon rind
Adds bright citrus aroma that balances the sweetness of the wine.
Cinnamon stick
Infuses warm, woody aroma into the wine during simmering.

The step that matters

Pour onto a wetted plate after cooling slightly. Isinglass is a gelatin-like protein that sets as it cools, so the mixture must be cool enough to handle yet still pourable. A wetted plate keeps the set jelly from sticking, so the drops can be lifted and cut cleanly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, cinnamon, sugar. 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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