Name: Admiral’s Cool Cup
Ingredients: 1 quart first-class cider; 1 orange; 1 lemon; 2 ounces fresh pineapple; 6 ounces sugar; 2 glasses Madeira; 1 sprig balm; ¼ nutmeg; ice

Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Admiral’s Cool Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Juice the orange and lemon, and strain the juice.
Shred the pineapple and add it to the juice.
Mix in the sugar, Madeira, balm, and nutmeg.

Chill and serve

Cover the mixture and chill in ice for 1 hour.
Serve over ice.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,664 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,746 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Cider + pineappletop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

First-class cider: Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the drink.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the citrus juice.
Madeira: Adds a rich, fortified wine flavour that deepens the punch.
Orange and lemon juice: Provides acidity and bright citrus aroma.
Fresh pineapple: Contributes fruity sweetness and aroma to the punch.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, orange, lemon, pineapple, sugar):

Cinnamonfits better
Gingerfits better
Peppermintfits better
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, orange, lemon, pineapple, sugar. 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.