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Drink

Sherry Cobbler

A chilled drink made with pale sherry, sugar, lemon peel, nutmeg, optional port, fruit flavoring, and ice.

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 ↓

Sherry Cobbler

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cobbler

  1. Combine 1 to 2 glasses of pale sherry with sugar to taste.

  2. Add a dash of lemon peel and a little nutmeg.

  3. If desired, add a spoonful of port and some orange or pineapple for flavor.

Serve

  1. Fill the tumbler with ice and serve with straws.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Sherry + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Sherry + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,246 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

Pale sherry
Forms the wine base of the drink, providing most of its body and flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sherry's dryness and acidity.
Orange or pineapple
Adds fruity aroma and a touch of acidity or sweetness to the drink.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

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