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Mint Cups

Mint Cups are cups made from woven mint leaves, filled with blanched hickory nuts and bound with syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and nuts are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,291 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Mint Cups

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Weave mint leaves and stems into a tightly twisted nest.

  2. Grease cups with butter and place the mint nests inside.

  3. Fill the nests with blanched hickory nuts, packing them closely.

  4. Pour about 3 tablespoons of syrup over the nuts and around the edges to bind the mint nests together.

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. Butter + nutstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Nuts + syruptop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together168 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Mint + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mint + nutstop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Butter + syruptop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,796 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mint leaves and stems
Provides the aroma and fresh flavor, and the twisted stems form the cup's shape.
Blanched hickory nuts
Supply the crunchy texture and rich, nutty flavor that fill the cups.
Syrup
Binds the mint nests together and sets into a crisp, sweet shell around the nuts.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup at crackling point. Syrup must be hot enough to harden as it cools, so it sets crisp and holds the nests together. Syrup that is too cool stays soft and fails to bind, while overly hot syrup can darken and turn bitter.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, nuts, syrup):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nuts, syrup. 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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