Why it works: Mint and brandy work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓
Mint Julbp
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Strip the tender leaves of mint into a tumbler.
Add brandy or your choice of spirit to the mint.
In a second tumbler, put pounded ice.
Build and serve
Pour the mint and spirit mixture over the ice.
Continue pouring until the mixture is well infused with the mint flavor.
Place the glass in a larger tumbler filled with the pounded ice.
Serve with a straw.
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.
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Mint + brandytop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together140 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
- Mint
- Its leaves supply the aroma and fresh flavor that define the drink.
- Brandy or other spirit
- Carries the mint's aromatic oils and gives the drink its alcoholic base and warmth.
- Pounded ice
- Chills the drink quickly and dilutes it slightly as it melts.
The step that matters
Continue pouring until the mixture is well infused with the mint flavor. Mint flavor comes from aromatic oils released when leaves are bruised and steeped in alcohol. Too little pouring or steeping leaves the drink weakly minted, while the oils are what carry the aroma.
“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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