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Strawberry Cocktails

A chilled strawberry cocktail with lemon, orange juice, and optional cherry garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Strawberry Cocktails

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Halve the strawberries and sweeten them with powdered sugar.

  2. Add lemon juice and orange juice to the strawberries and mix well.

  3. Chill the mixture thoroughly on ice.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add cherry, maraschino, or champagne to the strawberries.

  2. Garnish with finely minced fresh mint leaves, candied mint leaves, or a brandied cherry.

  3. Serve in cocktail glasses placed on a plate with a doily underneath.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  3. Orange + cherrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together689 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Orange + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Lemon + cherrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,301 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavor, sweetness and bulk of the drink.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the strawberries and dissolves readily into their juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the fruit flavor.
Orange juice
Adds liquid and extra citrus sweetness that blends with the strawberry juice.
Cherry, maraschino, or champagne
Adds a wine or liqueur note and aroma that lifts the drink.

The step that matters

Chill the mixture thoroughly on ice. Cold slows the breakdown of the fruit and keeps the strawberry flavor fresh and bright. Adding the alcoholic element only just before serving keeps its aroma sharp instead of fading.

Swap the cherry

The recipe marks cherry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, orange, mint):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, orange, 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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