Name: Kat Drink
Ingredients: 2 dozen black currant leaves; a small handful of woodruff; pounded lump sugar to taste; lemon juice to taste; 2 bottles of hock or Moselle

Why it works: Black currant and lemon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Kat Drink

Ingredients

2 dozen black currant leaves
a small handful of woodruff
pounded lump sugar to taste
lemon juice to taste
2 bottles of hock or Moselle

Directions

In a large glass mug or china bowl, combine black currant leaves, woodruff, pounded sugar, and lemon juice.
Pour in the hock or Moselle and stir occasionally for 30 minutes.
Serve immediately.

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.

Black currant + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together53 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together393 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Black currant leaves: Add a distinctive aromatic, herbal flavour to the wine during steeping.
Woodruff: Contributes a sweet, hay-like aroma that scents the wine as it steeps.
Hock or moselle: Forms the base of the drink, carrying the flavours of the leaves and herb.