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Mint Julep

A mint punch made with claret wine, fruit juices, and a mint syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mint Julep

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 1 quart of water with 2 cups of sugar for 20 minutes to make syrup.

  2. Separate mint into pieces, add boiling water, cover, and let stand for 5 minutes.

  3. Strain the mint mixture and add it to the syrup.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix in the fruit juices and cool the mixture.

  2. Pour into a punch bowl, add claret, and chill with a large piece of ice.

  3. Dilute with water and garnish with fresh mint leaves and whole strawberries.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  3. Strawberry + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together726 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Orange + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Strawberry + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the punch and dissolves into the syrup that balances the acidity of the juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and balances its sweetness.
Fresh mint
Infused in boiling water to add aroma and fresh herbal flavor to the syrup.
Claret wine
Adds body, tannin and wine flavor to the punch.
Strawberry juice
Contributes fruity flavor, color and sweetness.

The step that matters

Dilute with water. Adding water after chilling lets you control strength; the punch is already concentrated with syrup, wine and juices, so tasting before diluting prevents an overly strong or watery drink.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Strawberrythe original

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