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Drink

Preparing Rock and Rye

A simple cocktail made by mixing rye whiskey with a lemon-rock candy syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Preparing Rock and Rye

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil water, lemon, and rock candy together until the candy is dissolved.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then strain it through a cloth.

Finish

  1. Add the strained mixture to 1 quart of good rye whiskey.

  2. Stir well and it's ready for use.

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. Orange + ryetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together75 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + ryetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Rock candy
Dissolves into the water to add sweetness that balances the whiskey's sharpness.
Rye whiskey
Forms the base spirit and supplies the main flavor and alcohol of the drink.
Lemon
Adds acidity and citrus aroma that brighten the sweet syrup.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, rye):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, rye. 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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