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Drink

Claret Cup

A chilled cocktail of claret, soda water, crushed ice, sugar, nutmeg, brandy or maraschino, and lemon zest and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Claret Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Peel the lemons thinly and place the rind in a bowl.

  2. Squeeze the juice from the lemons into the bowl.

  3. Add a large lump of ice to the bowl.

  4. Pour the claret over the ice and lemon juice.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the soda water last.

  2. Stir in sugar to taste.

  3. Serve chilled.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Claret
Forms the wine base, supplying most of the flavor and body of the drink.
Lemons
Their juice adds acidity that brightens the wine and balances sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the acidity of the lemon and wine.
Soda water
Adds fizz and lightens the drink as it is diluted.
Crushed ice
Chills the drink and dilutes it gradually as it melts.

The step that matters

Add the soda water last. Carbonation escapes quickly once liquid is stirred or left standing. Adding the soda at the end, just before serving, keeps the drink fizzy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, nutmeg, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nutmeg, brandy. 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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