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An Admirable Cool Cup

A chilled lemon cider drink with sugar, sherry, nutmeg, and optional fresh balm or borage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and borage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 102 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

An Admirable Cool Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Weigh the sugar and rub the lemon rind on it to extract essence.

  2. Put the sugar in a deep jug and add the strained juice of 1½ lemons.

  3. Dissolve the sugar, then pour in the cider and sherry.

  4. Add the grated nutmeg and stir well.

Serve

  1. For a cooler drink, cover and chill in ice before serving.

  2. Serve with fresh balm or borage if desired.

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 + boragetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together102 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Nutmeg + boragetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together76 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  4. Cider + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  5. Sherry + boragetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves into the liquid to add sweetness and balance the lemon's acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the cider and sherry.
Cider
Forms the main liquid base and carries the fruit and spice flavours.
Sherry
Adds body and a dry, nutty depth to the drink.
Nutmeg
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes.

The step that matters

Dissolving the sugar with the rind. Rubbing the rind into the sugar releases the oils from its surface, which dissolve into the sugar and carry lemon aroma. Stirring the sugar fully into the juice and cider before chilling prevents grittiness and an uneven flavour.

Swap the borage

The recipe marks borage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, cider, sherry, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Boragethe original

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