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Cider Cup

A chilled sparkling cider drink with brandy, cucumber, lemon, and soda water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and brandy work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Cider Cup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Juice the lemon and add the juice, rind, cucumber, and sugar to a jug.

  2. Pour in the brandy and cider.

  3. Set the jug on ice for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the mixture, add the soda water, and serve in a glass jug.

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. Cider + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Cider + cucumbertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together572 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sparkling cider
Forms the liquid base and adds fruity sweetness and gentle fizz to the drink.
Brandy
Adds alcohol and warm, spirited flavour that carries the fruit notes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the drink and dissolves easily into the cold liquid.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma from the juice and rind.
Soda water
Adds carbonation, lightening the drink's texture just before serving.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

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

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