Name: Currant Julep
Ingredients: 1 pint currants; 1 pint water; crushed ice; 3 sugar cubes; tender mint stalks

Why it works: Currant and mint work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 45 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Currant Julep

Ingredients

Directions

Make the currant liquid

Mash the currants in a bowl.
Add water and rub the mixture through a sieve.
Strain the liquid through cheesecloth.
Chill the liquid on ice.

Assemble the glasses

In tall glasses, place crushed ice at the bottom.
Add 3 sugar cubes to each glass.
Line the glasses with tender mint stalks.

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.

Currant + minttop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together45 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,256 recipes
Sugar + minttop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,592 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Currants: Provide the main fruit flavour and the tart, colourful base of the drink.
Sugar cubes: Add sweetness to balance the tartness of the currant liquid.
Tender mint stalks: Add aroma to the drink as they line the glass.