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Drink

Claret Cup

A chilled claret-based drink with mint, cucumber or lemon, nutmeg, curaçao, and bruised sugar-candy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mint and cucumber work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 884 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Claret Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Infuse the mint in a wineglass of claret.

  2. Combine all ingredients in a jug and pack it in ice.

  3. Let it chill for half an hour.

Serve

  1. Strain off the ingredients and add the claret with the infused mint.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Mint + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cucumber + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together432 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mint + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,112 recipes

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

Nutmeg and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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 that gives the drink its body and flavour.
Soda water
Adds dilution and light carbonation, making the drink lighter and fizzy.
Sugar-candy
Adds sweetness to balance the acidity and tannin of the wine.
Curaçao
Adds orange-citrus aroma and a touch of sweetness.
Mint
Adds a fresh herbal aroma infused into the wine.

The step that matters

Strain off the ingredients before adding the claret. Leaving the infused mint and fruit in too long or sitting in the wine can draw out bitter, grassy flavours. Straining at the right moment keeps the drink clean and balanced.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mint, cucumber, 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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