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Drink

Drinks for Invalids

A fruit infusion made by mashing fruit, steeping in boiling water, sweetening, and cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tamarind and sugar work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 362 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Drinks for Invalids

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

  1. Mash the fruit of your choice.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mashed fruit.

  3. Let it steep for ten minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture.

Finish the drink

  1. Sweeten to taste.

  2. Cool the drink.

  3. Add ice 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. Tamarind + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Currant + tamarindtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Fruit
Provides the main flavour and aroma of the drink as it steeps in the water.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the fruit.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Mangofits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tamarind, sugar. 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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