Name: Bummer Drinks
Ingredients: 2 quarts best bottled cider; sugar to taste; ½ nutmeg, grated; ¼ teaspoon powdered ginger; ⅓ cup brandy; ⅓ cup noyau; 1 lemon, cut into thin slices

Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bummer Drinks

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the cider and sugar until the sugar is completely dissolved.
Add the grated nutmeg, powdered ginger, brandy, noyau, and lemon slices.
Let the mixture sit for two hours in ice before serving.

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.

Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,154 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,324 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Cider + brandytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together404 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).
Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,311 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Cider: Forms the liquid base and provides most of the punch's body and fruity flavour.
Sugar: Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the cider and lemon.
Brandy: Adds warmth and depth of flavour, and strength to the punch.
Noyau: Adds a sweet almond-like aroma and flavour that rounds out the spirits.
Lemon: Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma that lift the sweetness.

Swap the lemon

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

Applefits better
Figfits better
Apricotfits better
Lemonthe original

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