Got this gem from a recent issue of Science magazine…
Here’s a variation on the popular geeks who drink bar-room trivia contests. This geek wanted to describe the evolution of drinks! An evolutionary biologist, James Harriman, wondered whether new drinks arise by people adjusting old recipes to fit their tastes, giving rise to new “species” of cocktail in a sort of “taste-based natural selection”.
Geneticists have fancy software for making phylogenetic trees, showing how species branch out from one another genetically. With a common ancestor of vodka, the program naturally sorted different drinks based on their ingredients (which would be the “species”, I guess). You can get a poster of the cocktail evolutionary tree, which of course, doubles as a mixology guide.
And for those who haven’t discovered it yet, check out The Webtender This is a nice little algorithm for plugging in what you’ve got in your cupboard and finding out what you can make with it. You can also ask what you can make if you buy 1, 2, or 3 more ingredients.
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