Name: Kerrrina New Year’s Eve Drink
Ingredients: 1 quart water; ½ cup black currant jam; 5 whole cloves; 1 stick cinnamon (12 inches long)

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Kerrrina New Year’s Eve Drink

Ingredients

1 quart water
½ cup black currant jam
5 whole cloves
1 stick cinnamon (12 inches long)

Directions

In a saucepan, combine 1 quart of water and ½ cup of black currant jam.
Add 5 whole cloves and a 12-inch stick of cinnamon to the mixture.
Heat the mixture over medium heat until it is warm and well combined.
Serve the drink warm at midnight to celebrate the New Year.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Black currant + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together28 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).
Black currant + clovetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together40 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Black currant jam: Provides fruit flavour and natural sweetness that dissolves into the warm liquid.
Cinnamon: Adds warm, woody aroma to the drink.
Cloves: Add a strong, sweet-spicy aroma that infuses into the liquid as it heats.