Skip to main content

Black Pepper Martini

Kick off your cocktail hour with this stylish winner from the bartender at Tom's Kitchen at Somerset House

By bbcgoodfood · From Open Recipes · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,039 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 1
Prep5 min

Ingredients

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Chill a coupe or martini glass in the freezer for a few minutes.

  2. Fill a cocktail shaker about two-thirds full with ice, then add the gin, lemon juice, sugar syrup, rose syrup and grapefruit juice.

  3. Shake hard for about 15 seconds until the shaker is very cold.

  4. Strain the mixture into the chilled glass.

  5. Finely grind or crack black pepper over the top to garnish and serve immediately.

By bbcgoodfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + grapefruittop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + syruptop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Gin + syruptop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Grapefruit + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the grapefruit

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (gin, lemon, sugar, syrup, rose, pepper):

  1. Orangebetter flavor fit
  2. Limebetter flavor fit
  3. Raspberrybetter flavor fit
  4. Grapefruitthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against gin, lemon, sugar, syrup, rose, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).